Western civilization dawned from obscure sources along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia and along the course of the Nile River in Egypt. The origins of the extraordinary civilization that developed in the vast, ancient land of China are shrouded in similar mystery. Legend suggests that by the year 2000 bce a culture was evolving in virtual isolation from the pockets of civilization in the West. Some of the many innovations developed by the ancient Chinese changed the course of human events. The compass made exploration and seafaring possible. Gunpowder, used by the Chinese for fireworks, fueled an aggressive aspect of the human temperament and changed the nature of war. Chinese calligraphy, an ancient writing system, is used today by more people than any other visual language system. Paper, a magnificent and economical substrate for transmitting information, and printing, the duplication of words and images, made possible the wide communication of thought and deeds. Other inventions included silk, porcelain, and the block book. Europeans adopted Chinese inventions and used them to conquer much of the world: the compass (which may have been developed independently in Europe) directed early explorers across the seas and around the globe; firearms enabled Europeans to subjugate the native populations of Africa, Asia, and the Americas; and printing on paper became the method for spreading European language, culture, religion, and law throughout the world.
Chinese calligraphy
Similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics and Mayan writing in Central America, the Chinese writing system is a purely visual language. It is not alphabetical, and every symbol is composed of a number of differently shaped lines within an imaginary square. Legend holds that Chinese was first written about 1800 bce by Cangjie, who was inspired to invent writing by contemplating the claw marks of birds and footprints of animals. Cangjie proceeded to develop elementary pictographs of things in nature. These images are highly stylized and composed of a minimum number of lines, but they are easily deciphered. The Chinese sacrificed the realism found in hieroglyphs for more abstract designs.
Aesthetic considerations seem to have interested the Chinese from the early beginnings of their writing. Simple nouns were developed first, and the written language slowly matured and became enriched as characters were invented to express feelings, actions, colors, sizes, and types. Chinese characters are logograms, graphic signs that represent an entire word. (The sign $, for instance, is a logogram representing the word dollar). Ideographs and phonetic loans—borrowing the sign of a similar-sounding word—were developed, but written Chinese was never broken down into syllable signs, like cuneiform, or alphabetic signs for elementary sounds. Therefore, there is no direct relationship between the spoken and written Chinese languages. Both are independent systems for conveying thought: a sound from the mouth to the ear, and a sign from the hand to the eye. Learning the total vocabulary of forty-four thousand characters was the sign of wisdom and scholarship. The Japanese adapted the Chinese logograms for their written language despite the great differences between the two spoken languages. Similarly, different spoken Chinese dialects are written with the same logograms.
The earliest known Chinese writing is called chiaku-wen, or “bone-and-shell” script (Figs. 3–1 and 3–2), used from 1800 to 1200 bce. It was closely bound to the art of divination, an effort to foretell future events through communication with the gods or long-dead ancestors. This ancient writing—as with hieroglyphics and cuneiform—was pictographic. Chinese pictographs are found incised on tortoise shells and large animals’ flat shoulder bones, called oracle bones, which convey communications between the living and the dead. When one wished to consult an exalted ancestor or a god, one asked the royal diviner to inscribe the message on a polished animal bone. The diviner pushed a red-hot metal bar into a hole in the inscribed bone, and the heat produced an intricate web of cracks. The diviner then read or interpreted these cracks, which were believed to be messages from the dead.
The next phase of Chinese calligraphy, called chin-wen, or “bronze” script, consisted of inscriptions on cast-bronze objects, including food and water vessels, musical instruments, weapons, mirrors, coins, and seals. Messages were inscribed in the casting molds to preserve answers received from gods and ancestors during divination. The permanence of bronze also made it suitable for important treaties, penal codes, and legal contracts. Ceremonial vessels used to hold food offerings during ancestor worship and vessels inscribed with dedications (Fig. 3–3) contained well-formed characters in orderly alignment. Most inscriptions were made inside the vessels, and the characters were more studied and regular than in the bone-and-shell inscriptions.
Artists in different places developed different writing styles until Chinese calligraphy was unified under the powerful emperor Shihuangdi (c. 259–210 bce). During his reign Confucian scholars were buried alive and their books burned. Thousands of lives were sacrificed building the Great Wall of China to protect Shihuangdi and his empire. But the emperor also unified the Chinese people into one nation and issued royal decrees standardizing weights, measures, the axle length on carts, laws, and writing. Prime minister Li Si (c. 280–208 bce) was charged with designing the new writing style. This third phase in the design evolution of Chinese calligraphy is called hsiao chuan, or “small-seal” style (Fig. 3–1). The lines are drawn in thicker, more even strokes. More curves and circles are used in this graceful, flowing style, which is much more abstract than the earlier two styles. Each character is neatly balanced and fills its imaginary square primly.
Li-shu (also called “clerical” style) (Fig. 3–4), which had a major impact on Chinese calligraphy, can be divided into the Qing and Han styles. Later, Cheng Miao made a further simplification of the hsiao chuan, often referred to as the “li transformation.” Writing was made much easier through changing the more rounded strokes into straight and angular ones.
The development of li-shu reached its peak during the Eastern Han dynasty and engendered various styles. Throughout the four centuries of Han rule, the vast majority of tablets were written in li-shu. Within its flat structure, li-shu is carefully and neatly executed, delicate with many variations. This style represents a watershed in the development of Chinese character, ushering in a new era of Chinese calligraphy. At the same time, it laid the foundation for the adoption of chen-shu.
The final step in the evolution of Chinese calligraphy is chen-shu (also, kai-shu, or “regular” style) (Fig. 3–5), which has been in continuous use for nearly two thousand years. In regular style, every line, dot, and nuance of the brush can be controlled by the sensitivity and skill of the calligrapher. An infinite range of design possibilities exists within every word. Structure, composition, shape, stroke thickness, and the relationship of strokes to each other and to the white spaces surrounding them are design factors determined by the writer. Regular-style calligraphy has an abstract beauty that rivals humanity’s highest attainments in art and design. Indeed, it is considered the highest art form in China, more important even than painting. Chinese painting and calligraphy have close bonds, since both are executed with ink on paper or silk using gestured strokes of the brush.
The evolution of Chinese writing can be traced from its pictographic origins through one of the early characters—for example, the prehistoric character for the three-legged pot called a li, which is now the word for “tripod” (Fig. 3–6). The li was an innovative product design, for the black discolorations on some surviving examples indicate that it stood in the fire to heat its contents rapidly. In the oracle-bone script, it was an easily recognized pictograph. In the 1000 bce bronze script, this character had evolved into a simpler form. The regular-style character echoes the three-part bottom and flat top of the earlier forms.
The painting of bamboo from the Album of Eight Leaves (Fig. 3–7) by Li Fangying (1695–1755 ce) shows how the vividly descriptive strokes with a bamboo brush join calligraphy and painting, poem and illustration into a unified communication. Nature is the inspiration for both, and every stroke and dot is given the energy of a living thing. Children begin their early training by drawing bamboo leaves and stems with the brush to learn the basic strokes.
Spiritual states and deep feelings can be expressed in calligraphy. Thick, languid strokes become mournful, and poems written in celebration of spring have a light exuberance. A master calligrapher was once asked why he dug his ink-stained fingers so deeply into the hairs of his brush. He replied that only then could he feel the Tao (the cosmic spirit that operates throughout the universe in animate and inanimate things) flow from his arm, into the brush, and onto the paper.
Calligraphy was said to have bones (authority and size), meat (the proportion of the characters), blood (the texture of the fluid ink), and muscle (spirit and vital force). The Love of Lotus landscape (Fig. 3–8), painted by Shi Tao (1630–c. 1707 ce), clearly demonstrates the connection between calligraphy and Chinese painting. Shi Tao first used two different brush techniques to draw the lotus and the stone on the shore. The text in the upper left is Zhou Dunyi’s classical Song dynasty poem extolling the lotus. Li-shu calligraphy expresses movement and energy as an organic whole. Another Chinese master calligrapher is Wang Xizhi. Chinese calligraphers consider his Lantingji Xu (Fig. 3–9) the best example of xing-shu (a further refined style of chen-shu).
The invention of paper
Dynastic records attribute the invention of paper to the eunuch and high governmental official Cai Lun, who reported his invention to Emperor Ho in 105 ce. Whether Cai Lun truly invented paper, perfected an earlier invention, or patronized its invention is not known. He was, however, deified as the god of the papermakers.
In earlier times the Chinese wrote on bamboo slats or wooden strips using a bamboo pen with a dense and durable ink, the origins of which are obscure. Lampblack or soot was deposited on a dome-shaped cover over a vessel of oil with several burning wicks. The lampblack was collected, mixed thoroughly with a gum solution using a mortar and pestle, and then molded into sticks or cubes. For writing, such a stick or cube was returned to the liquid state by rubbing it in water on an inking stone. The strips of wood were used for short messages; 23-centimeter pieces of bamboo tied together with leather strips or silk string were used for longer communications. Although these substrates were abundant and easy to prepare, they were heavy. After the invention of woven silk cloth, it too was used as a writing surface. However, it was very costly.
Cai Lun’s process for making paper continued almost unchanged until papermaking was mechanized in nineteenth-century England. Natural fibers, including mulberry bark, hemp fishnets, and rags, were soaked in a vat of water and beaten into a pulp with pounding mortars. A vat-man dipped a screen-bottomed, framelike mold into the pulp solution, taking just enough onto the mold for the sheet of paper. With skill and split-second judgment, the vat-man raised the mold from the vat while oscillating and shaking it to cross and mesh the fibers as the water drained through the bottom. Then the paper was couched, or pressed onto a woolen cloth, to which it adhered while it dried. The mold was free for immediate reuse. The couched sheets were stacked, pressed, and then hung to dry. The first major improvement in the process was the use of starch sizing or gelatin to stiffen and strengthen the paper and increase its ability to absorb ink.
In paper’s early decades some ancient Chinese considered it a cheap substitute for silk or bamboo, but as time went on, its light weight, economical manufacture, and versatility overcame all reservations. The coarse, long-fibered quality of early paper caused no problems, because the hairbrush, invented many centuries earlier, was the primary writing instrument. Scrolls for writing were made by gluing together sheets of paper, sometimes delicately stained slate blue, lemon yellow, or a pale, warm yellow. These sheets were rolled onto dowels of sandalwood or ivory, which were sometimes tipped with jade or amber. In addition to writing on paper, the Chinese used their new material as wrapping paper, wallpaper, toilet paper, and napkins.
The discovery of printing
Printing, a major breakthrough in human history, was invented by the Chinese. The first form was relief printing: the spaces around an image on a flat surface are cut away, the remaining raised surface is inked, and a sheet of paper is placed over the surface and rubbed to transfer the inked image to the paper. Two hypotheses have been advanced about the invention of printing. One is that the use of engraved seals to make identification imprints evolved into printing. As early as the third century bce, seals or stamps were used to make impressions in soft clay. Often, bamboo or wood strips bearing writing were wrapped in silk, which was then sealed by clay stamped with an impression.
During the Han dynasty (third century ce) seals called chops (Fig. 3–10) were made by carving calligraphic characters into a flat surface of jade, silver, gold, or ivory. The user inked this flat surface by pushing it into a pastelike red ink made from cinnabar, and then pressed it onto a substrate to form an impression, as one does with present-day rubber stamps. The impression was a red shape with white characters. Around 500 ce people began using a different kind of chop. The artisans cut away the negative area surrounding the characters so that the characters could be printed in red surrounded by white paper. The fundamental technique for block printing was now available. Zhao Meng-fu’s fourteenth-century painting of a goat and sheep (Fig. 3–11) has both types of chops imprinted upon its surface: white characters reversed from a solid ground and solid characters surrounded by a white ground.
The second theory about the origins of printing focuses on the early Chinese practice of making inked rubbings from inscriptions carved in stone (Fig. 3–12). Beginning in 165 ce, Confucian classics were carved into stone to ensure an accurate, permanent record. The disadvantages of these stone “books” were their weight and the space they required. One historical work required 5.3 hectares for storage of the tablets, which were arranged like rows of tombstones. Soon, copies of these inscriptions were pulled by making ink rubbings. A damp sheet of thin paper was laid on the stone. The paper was pressed into the depressions of the inscription with a stiff brush. Then, an inked cloth pad was lightly rubbed over the surface to produce an ink image from the incised inscription. Although the ink was applied to the top of the paper rather than to the relief image in this method, the process is related to relief printing.
As early as the second century ce, rubbings were also made from stone relief sculptures carved as offering shrines and tombs (Fig. 3–13). In a sense, these reliefs were closer to painting than to sculpture, for the figures crowding the complex designs were handled as flat silhouettes with linear detail and very little spatial depth. In retrospect, these votive and tomb carvings resemble neither sculpture nor painting as much as they do relief woodblock printing plates.
Whether relief printing evolved from chops, rubbings from stone inscriptions, or a synthesis of both is not known. Just who invented relief printing and when and where it began remain a mystery. The route is marked by undated relics: printed fabrics, stencil pictures, and thousands of stamped impressions of the Buddha figure. By about 770 ce, when the earliest existing datable relief printing was produced, the technique was well developed. Using a brush and ink, the material to be printed was prepared on a sheet of thin paper. Calligraphy was written, images were drawn. The block cutter applied this thin page to the smooth wooden block, image side down, after wetting the surface with a paste or sizing. When the paste or sizing was thoroughly dry, the paper was carefully rubbed off. A faint inked imprint of the image, which was now reversed, remained on the surface of the block.
Working with amazing speed and accuracy, the block cutter carved away the surface around the inked image, leaving it in high relief. The printer inked the raised surface, applied a sheet of paper over it, then rubbed the back of the paper with a rubber or stiff brush to transfer the ink to the page, which was then lifted from the block. So efficient was this method that a skilled printer could pull over two hundred impressions per hour.
During the eighth century ce, Chinese culture and the Buddhist religion were exported to Japan, where the earliest surviving datable printing was produced. Mindful of the terrible smallpox epidemic three decades earlier, the Japanese empress Shotoku decreed that one million copies of Buddhist dharani (charms) be printed and placed inside one million miniature pagodas about 11.5 centimeters tall (Fig. 3–14). The empress was attempting to follow the teachings of Buddha, who had advised his followers to write seventy-seven copies of a dharani and place them in a pagoda, or place each one in its own small clay pagoda. This would lengthen one’s life and eventually lead to paradise. Empress Shotoku’s efforts failed, for she died about the time the charms were being distributed, rolled up in their little three-story wooden pagodas. But the sheer number produced, combined with their sacred value, enabled numerous copies to survive to this day.
The oldest surviving printed manuscript is the Diamond Sutra (Fig. 3–15). It consists of seven sheets of paper pasted together to form a scroll 5 meters long and 30 centimeters high. Six sheets of text convey the Buddha’s revelations to his elderly follower Subhuti; the seventh is a complex linear woodcut illustration of the Buddha and his disciples. The Buddha decreed that “whosoever repeats this text shall be edified.” Apparently one Wang Chieh responded to the Buddha’s charge, for the final lines of text declare that he made the Diamond Sutra for wide, free distribution to honor his parents on the date equivalent to 11 May 868. The excellence of the printing indicates that the craft had advanced to a high level by the time it was produced.
During the early ninth century ce the Chinese government began to issue paper certificates of deposit to merchants who deposited metal currency with the state. When a critical provincial shortage of iron money developed shortly before the year 1000, paper money was designed, printed, and used in lieu of metal coins. The government took control of the currency’s production, and millions of notes per year were printed. Inflation and devaluation soon followed, as did efforts to restore confidence: money was printed on perfumed paper of high silk content, some money was printed on colored paper, and the penalty for counterfeiting was death. China thus became the first society in which ordinary people had daily contact with printed images. In addition to paper money, block prints bearing religious images and texts received wide distribution (Fig. 3–16).
During the tenth century, errors in the Confucian classics came to light. Chinese prime minister Fang Tao became deeply concerned and felt that new master texts should be made. Lacking the resources needed for extensive cutting of stone inscriptions, Fang Tao turned to the rapidly developing block-printing method for this monumental task. With great scholars of the age as editors who provided commentary and a famous calligrapher overseeing the writing of the master copies, producing the 130 volumes of the nine Confucian classics took twenty-one years, 933 to 953. Although the original goal was not spreading knowledge to the masses but authenticating the texts, Fang Tao took a fairly obscure craft and thrust it into the mainstream of Chinese civilization.
The scroll was replaced with paged formats in the ninth or tenth century. First, scrolls were turned into folded books that opened accordion-style, like a railroad timetable. In the tenth or eleventh century stitched books were developed. Two pages of text were printed from one block. Then the sheet was folded down the middle, with the unprinted side of the sheet facing inward and the two printed pages facing out. Sequences of these folded and printed sheets were gathered and sewn to make a codex-style book. The pages of the Pen ts’ao medical herbal (Fig. 3–17) were assembled in this fashion. Illustrations and calligraphy were used for headings. A design used to separate the text into sections was shown in the center of the right-hand page.
Another early form of Chinese graphic design and printing was playing cards (Fig. 3–18). These “sheet dice” were first printed on heavy paper cards at about the time paged books were replacing manuscript scrolls.
A benchmark in block printing—reproducing beautiful calligraphy with perfection—was established in China by 1000 ce and has never been surpassed. The calligrapher was listed with the author and printer in the colophon. State printers were joined by private printers as histories and herbals, science and political science, poetry and prose were carved onto blocks of wood and printed. The quiet revolution that printing wrought upon Chinese intellectual life brought about a renaissance of learning and culture just as surely as Johann Gutenberg’s invention of movable type in the West did more than five hundred years later.
The invention of movable type
In a woodblock print, such as Figure 3–16, the wood around each calligraphic character is painstakingly cut away. Around 1045 ce the Chinese alchemist Pi Sheng (1023–63) extended this process by developing the concept of movable type, an innovative process never used widely in Asia. If each character were an individual raised form, he reasoned, then any number of characters could be placed in sequence on a surface, inked, and printed. He made his types from a mixture of clay and glue. These three-dimensional calligraphic characters were baked over a straw fire until they hardened. To compose a text, Pi Sheng placed them side by side upon an iron plate coated with a waxy substance to hold the characters in place. The plate was gently heated to soften the wax, and a flat board was pressed upon the types to push them firmly in place and equalize their height from the surface of the form. After the wax cooled, the page of calligraphic types was printed exactly like a woodblock. After the printing was complete, the form was heated again to loosen the wax so that the characters could be filed in wooden cases.
Because Chinese writing is not alphabetical, types were organized according to rhymes. The large number of characters in Asian languages made filing and retrieving the characters difficult. Later, the Chinese cast letters in tin and cut them from wood (Fig. 3–19), but movable type never replaced the handcut woodblock in China.
A notable effort to print from bronze movable type began in Korea under government sponsorship in 1403 ce. Characters cut from beech wood were pressed into a trough filled with fine sand, making a negative impression. A cover with holes was placed over the impression, and molten bronze was poured into it. After the bronze cooled, a type character was formed. These metal characters were, of course, less fragile than Pi Sheng’s earthenware types.
It is curious that movable type was first invented in cultures whose written language systems numbered not in the hundreds but in the thousands of characters. With a total of more than forty-four thousand characters, it is not surprising that movable type never came into widespread use in the Far East. One interesting effort to simplify sorting and setting types was the invention of a revolving “lazy Susan” table with a spinning tabletop 2 meters in diameter (Fig. 3–20). The compositor could sit at this table and rotate it to bring the section with the character within reach.
The Chinese contribution to the evolution of visual communications was formidable. During Europe’s thousand-year medieval period, China’s invention of paper and printing spread slowly westward, arriving in Europe just as the Renaissance began. This transitional period in European history began in fourteenth-century Italy and was marked by a rediscovery of classical knowledge, a flowering of the arts, and the beginnings of modern science. All were aided by printing.