Chinese Calligraphy

During the thousands of years old history of the Chinese language, you can clearly see how the tools and materials used for writing have affected the looks of the characters. The oldest traces of Chinese writing consist of pottery and bones with inscriptions where the characters are carved with sharp angles – almost like the Nordic runes.

When the Chinese first invented the book, it consisted of bamboo sticks sewn together side by side. Columns of characters were written on each stick with a brush, which worked quite well with the Chinese way of writing columns of characters from right to left. Writing with a brush also made some new freedom in the form of the characters – especially the day that paper was invented!

The oldest bamboo-books have not survived to current times, but there may be copies of some works – and also quite a lot of ancient metal objects with cast-in characters. Further more there are paintings, seals and many other types of objects with inscription that help us to give proves for the development of the Chinese system of writing.

Today Chinese is written with all sorts of pens and papers, but if you want to make something really nice, it's of course still most proper to use an ink brush and rice paper. For daily training, I personally like to write Chinese characters with jell-ink ballpoint pens, since it gives me the feeling of having a "swoop" similar to the result you'll get with brushes. Try finding what pen will suit you best. Do keep in mind that you may very well prefer one type of pens for writing in English, while a different choice may show more suitable for Chinese!

Avoid writing Chinese with red ink, since that may give an unwanted message to possible readers... Sure, I can agree that Chinese see red colour as a symbol for luck, and use red ink for their seals, but Chinese are also know to write with red ink when firing personnel or cancelling friendship!