Because only China possesses such unique conditions that allow pictographic writing to thrive. In my consciousness and philosophy, I don’t merely regard Chinese characters as pictographs—rather, it should be reversed: Chinese characters are imagery scripts, artistic scripts, aesthetic scripts, and the script of life’s journey. Why have Chinese characters taken root and flourished so vigorously in the soil of Chinese culture? It’s all due to their profound cultural origins. Why so profound? This lecture will awaken you as if from a dream.
Within the cultural context of Chinese characters, we’ve traversed eras: from the Oracle Bone Script period—emerging in the divination age of the I Ching, where images and text merged, and calligraphy and painting shared the same origin—to the Bronze Inscriptions, the Zhou Script of the Large Seal Script, and the Stone Drum Inscriptions (all falling under the Large Seal category, right?). Then came the Qin Shi Huang era, which brought sweeping reforms. After conquering the six states and unifying China, he decreed uniform writing, standardized cart axles, unified measurements, and centralized governance. Thus, the Small Seal Script became the official script.
Yet within this process, the clerical transformation occurred—and Clerical Script was nothing short of a revolution. If standardized writing was a top-down mandate from the state and dynasty, then Clerical Script was a grassroots revolution by writers themselves. Though theories vary, I maintain that Clerical Script was created by slaves, court officials, scribes, and retainers. After all, even a chancellor was but a servant before the emperor, was he not? Hence, the revolution of Clerical Script arose because emperors didn’t write themselves—they dictated leisurely. But when war erupted, the emperor’s words had to be recorded swiftly. Could the intricate Small Seal Script keep pace? Hardly. Thus emerged the clerical transformation and Draft Cursive Script—a shorthand, rapid writing that birthed our square characters.
As mentioned this morning by a classmate, the principle of “starting from Gen (艮) and ending at Qian (乾)” in The Double Oars of Art refers precisely to Clerical Script’s brush technique. The central stroke curves like an arc, while the starting stroke begins squarely from the lower-left corner—exactly where the Gen trigram resides.
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