horse car fish eye mountain these glyphs
may not seem familiar to you but you've
certainly met their descendants we've
all seen Chinese characters before
whether on the menu of your local
Chinese restaurant or on the back of a
gym enthusiast that had a spiritual
awakening during their last backpacking
trip in Asia we can understand the
appeal these logograms have Chinese
writings are beautifully designed and
have an air of wisdom to them but
there's more to Chinese characters than
aesthetics through a reflection of 3,000
years of cultural evolution but when did
these symbols become part of the Chinese
language and how have they evolved over
the years
you're watching explore mode and today
we're diving into the history of Chinese
characters to the unknowing eye Chinese
characters may seem like a confusing
collection of lines and boxes but
they're not just random strokes each
character carries deep meaning you just
need to know how to interpret them think
about Chinese characters like Lego
blocks Chinese words are built part by
part usually one part represents the
meaning the radical and the other
pronunciation there are a lot of basic
characters that can stand alone like
water
Shui heart Sheen and mouth coal others
are built from left to right like the
word for good ha which depicts a mother
with her child
symbolizing goodness or happiness some
are built from top to bottom like the
word for grass saw which has the radical
for grass at the top and the word for
early saw at the bottom which gives it
its pronunciation and others are written
from the outside in like the word for
stuffy
which shows a heart with an adorn
symbolizing a person feeling muggy and
trapped behind closed doors the oldest
form of Chinese writing dates back to
1200 BCE
in the late years of the Song Dynasty
these early inscriptions are called
oracle bone scripts
jaku one as you might have guessed from
the name Oracle bone script known in
Chinese as jakku one were used for
divination purposes Enquirer's would
engrave their questions on an ox scapula
or tortoise shells which were then
handed to a diviner the diviner would
heat up the bone until it cracked and
interpret an answer depending on where
the fissures grew questions at the time
covered a wide range of topics from
military campaign strategies to hunting
expeditions and dream interpretations
these early chinese pictograms can still
be linked to modern Chinese characters
take this Oracle one question about the
weather as an example the characters can
still be easily translated and
understood in modern Chinese the
similarities are even more apparent and
highly pictographic characters like
water sway fire whole-person Ren and
tree or wood
move see what we're talking about oracle
bones almost got crushed to extinction
during the 19th century farmers dug out
a number of Oracle bone script and
confuse them with fossils from the
Pleistocene that at the time were
crushed and sold as Chinese medicine to
treat malaria and knife wounds the story
goes that in 1899 some oracle bones were
sold to one mural the Chancellor of the
Imperial Academy in Beijing who happened
to be a collector of Chinese bronzes
which also bear ancient Chinese
scriptures upon further inspection of
the bones that had been sold to him he
recognized these two had ancient Chinese
writings on them
after his death in the year 1900 his
collection of oracle bones was passed on
to his son who sold to a Chinese
archeologist named Leo II Leo would go
on to publish rubbings of several oracle
bone scripts bringing the asian
scripture to the attention of
international scholars the rest is
history
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Chinese scripts found on oracle bones
and bronze scripts were already quite
advanced and functional for their time
but the characters were often
inconsistent spanning through the late
jo dynasty to Qin Dynasty roughly from
221 to 106 BCE the seal script Chinese
form or Jones rule was developed it was
much more uniform in size and style
while still maintaining a pictographic
essence following elongated strokes and
square shapes these characters were
typically carved onto stone or Jade to
create Imperial seals the first Imperial
seal was carved unto white jade and was
commissioned by the first emperor of a
unified China Qin Shi Huangdi after he
defeated the other warring States the
Qin Dynasty lasted just 36 years but it
is one of the most culturally
influential dynasties in Chinese history
one of Jin Sol honks greatest projects
was a construction of the Great Wall of
China before his reign there were pieces
of the wall built by past Emperor's in
different regions but it was Chien who
connected large stretches of them other
dynasties after his would follow suit
creating the large fortification system
we know of today another of genes
historical legacies is his tomb in 1974
unsuspecting farmers were digging a well
in San Shi China when they unearthed the
clay head of what seemed to be an
ancient Chinese warrior now we know them
as the Terracotta Army warriors a
collection of 8,000 soldiers built
specifically to guard Chin's tomb and
protect him in his afterlife but it
wasn't just soldiers Sheens mausoleum
contains cavalry horses acrobats
chariots and musicians each of which was
unique in their design these sculptures
helped historians and archaeologists
study the craftsmanship of this time
as well as military rankings and even
the chemical components of the paint
used to decorate the sculptures what
seal script was very beautiful and it
served its ornamental purpose well but
it wasn't very convenient when it came
to producing official documents quickly
this is where the first modern version
of Chinese characters began to develop
beginning with clerical script clerical
script or Li Shu appeared around 206 BCE
to 220 ad
it was a much more simplified version of
a seal script replacing curves and
circles with straight lines and squares
clerical script would later evolved into
the regular Chinese script we know today
without much changes other than the
simplification of strokes but the
evolution of Chinese characters didn't
stop there
time for an express explore explanation
start the clock
nowadays there are two versions of
modern Chinese characters traditional
characters used in Taiwan Hong Kong and
Macau and simplified characters used in
mainland China Singapore and Malaysia
the simplification of Chinese characters
began in 1956 when in an effort to raise
literacy rates in the country which was
at 20% of the Communist Party took over
Chinese officials began releasing and
promoting documents containing
simplified versions of Chinese
characters characters were simplified by
decreasing the number of strokes per
character sometimes this meant removing
parts of the character other times it
meant rewriting it into a simpler form
but the simplified versus traditional
debate goes beyond education many
traditional Chinese supporters feel that
much of the meaning and artistry behind
each character was stripped away during
the simplification process take the word
love or I as an example at the center of
the character in traditional Chinese is
the character for heart and the
simplified version the heart is taken
away a more drastic change can be seen
in the Chinese word for listen ting the
traditional version has the character
for ear heart eyes and a line separating
the heart and eyes to symbolize
undivided attention meaning that to
truly listen one's heart eyes and ears
have to give undivided attention
who or what we're listening to now look
at the simplified version which was
completely modified from the original
the character on the left is mouth coal
and the character on the right is gene a
unit of measurement for weight no
connection can be made between the
pictogram and the actual meaning of the
word but Chinese officials weren't just
looking to simplify characters they
wanted to create a romanized version of
their pronunciations that would help
globalize the language so Mao Zedong
tasked solely alum and economist turned
linguist with this mission an offer he
could not refuse
literally Chinese characters were almost
completely eliminated by Mao Zedong in
mainland China until an unlikely
historical figure advised him against it
before Mao rolled out the complete
reformation of traditional characters he
was contemplating completely romanized
the Chinese language that is according
to dull until he met with Joseph Stalin
in 1949 Mao shared his Chinese writing
reform plans with him and asked Stalin
for his advice support to a memoir by
miles personal secretary
Stalin told me quote you're a great
country and you should have your own
Chinese alphabet
you shouldn't simply use a Latin
alphabet it took so and a team of
linguists three years to develop the
pronunciation guide we now know as Han
opinion based on the tooling for how the
original Chinese phonetic guide Joe's
guide has now become the most widely
used Chinese romanization system in
China and around the world successfully
facilitating the dissemination of
Mandarin Chinese nowadays one point one
one seven billion people in the world
speak Mandarin Chinese and with China
expanding as an economic powerhouse
there's no doubt that number will
increase are you up for the challenge
thanks for watching explore mode if you
liked this video hit the thumbs up
button if you want to explore even more
with us check out this video we made on
tarot cards in their origin before you
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