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Seal characters, which were developed in the Western Zhou Dynasty (11th century-711BC) and are the earliest form of writing after oracle inscriptions, were the first unified and standardized characters of the nation. Official script is a simplified form of script since seal characters were too complicated for ancient officials to use when copying documents.
Official script led to the emergence of regular script, which was square in form, non-cursive and architectural in style, in the third century. Official script also gave birth to cursive script where characters are often joined with the last stroke of the first that merges into the initial stroke of the next character, which made the writing process much faster. Running script falls somewhere between regular and cursive scripts.
Calligraphy is an art form that involves a great deal of theory and requires many skills; consequently there are few calligraphers that have reached the highest realm of calligraphy. Among the most outstanding calligraphers in ancient China were Wang Xizhi, Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhengqing, and Liu Gongquan, who are known for pioneering their own styles.
History of Chinese Calligraphy
Chinese calligraphy has a long history dating 4000 years. No one can tell exactly when Chinese written language appeared. The oldest language discovered now is Jia Gu Wen. But Jia Gu Wen is a mature written language. The language discovered before it is Tao Wen. Tao Wen is a language far more from maturity. Actually it's hard to be called a language. People think there should be some written languages between Tao Wen and Jia Gu Wen. But no supporting archaeological discovery has appeared so far.
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