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Jiaguwen

Chinese script is one of the oldest and most widely used writing systems in the world, boasting a history of five or six thousand years. About one-fourth of population on earth uses it.

The creation and evolution ofChinese charactersare closely interwoven with the development of Chinese culture. Chinese characters are the basic carriers of traditional Chinese culture, and, as an important tool for extending, spreading and exchanging ideas have played a critical role in the long history of the Chinese nation. One may well argue that without Chinese characters Chinese culture would not have achieved the splendors it did.

It is difficult to determine the specific time when Chinese characters emerged. The oldest characters we see today are the scripts on the tortoise shells and animal bones in theShang Dynasty(17th - 11th century BC) and scripts carved onbronze wares. Characters of the Shang Dynasty have been much developed, so Chinese characters might have emerged long before the dynasty, perhaps as early as in the New Stone Age about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.

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The earliest Chinese written language appeared in the Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 BC). At that time, people believed inghosts and practiced divination on important occasions. They inscribed the divination words on tortoise shells or animal bones, and painted them red to symbolize good luck or black to symbolize potential disaster. The words were inscribed with knives. Some of them are big, some are small, some are complicated, some are simple, but they are all well defined.

Examples of shell and bone writing were not found until Emperor Guangxu's reign during theQing Dynasty(1644 -1911), thousands of years after they were made. .The discovery occurred inAnyang,Henan Province, which was the capital city of the Shang Dynasty. In 1899, the banks of the Huanshui River in Henan Province collapsed, and many tortoise shells with carved patterns on them were revealed. At first, people regarded the shells asdragonbones and used them as medicine.