The new trend: North American elites are all obsessed with Chinese calligraphy!

Speaking of children’s interest classes is synonymous with “burning money”. For North American parents, “burning money” is a small thing, and choosing the right interest class is king. Recently, Chinese calligraphy classes have quietly become popular in North American parenting circles, and children feel the oriental charm on this “interest train”.

This Chinese calligraphy first hit elite parents.

It is popular for North American elites to go to Chinese restaurants for dates and business talks, and eating oriental food with chopsticks has become a new symbol of taste and self-cultivation.

Go to eat roast duck today, and try the Roujiamo tomorrow…

“Have you got a meal yet?”

This common greeting in China may also be very suitable for use in North America today.

It’s not enough to just enjoy oriental food. North American parents are focusing on their children.

When mothers in the Upper East Side of New York were still caught in the battle for Birkin bags, elite mothers in North America had already bought pens, ink, paper and inkstones and sent their children to Chinese calligraphy classes. In addition to equestrian, fencing, and baseball, the children competed with mysterious oriental characters.

👉Why do you choose Chinese calligraphy?

North American parents believe that in terms of language learning, the difficulty of Chinese is very challenging and can exercise children’s learning ability. Learning one of the most difficult languages in the world, this learning ability is really nothing to say. It was okay when learning characters, but when it came to forming words, the children were a little confused. Why did the meaning of words change when the words were formed? I can only sigh that the Chinese culture is extensive and profound!

👉Why practice calligraphy?

That’s because the art radar has sounded. The beauty of Chinese calligraphy is recognized. Once these square characters are written with a brush, the oriental charm will be created. While learning Chinese characters, it can also cultivate children’s artistic sentiments, killing two birds with one stone! Interestingly, the children learn a variety of fonts in the Chinese calligraphy class. The common cursive script, running script, and regular script are only entry-level, while Xiaozhuan and Lishu are the most popular.

Seven styles of Chinese characters: Jiajin Zhuanli Caokaixing, only the first two are not involved, it is indeed the latest trick of chicken baby! The fonts are all written, and these little stories need to be known!

Interesting facts in the evolution of Chinese characters

Attractive not only book style

Chinese characters have undergone thousands of years of evolution, and the fonts have undergone considerable changes. If children feel that practicing calligraphy dryly is too boring, let’s neutralize it with a few interesting short stories of Chinese characters!

01 Oracle

Oracle bone inscriptions appeared in the late Yin and Shang Dynasties around the 14th century BC, and you can tell from the name that they are characters carved on tortoise shells or animal bones. Some time ago, a “car accident” in the Shang Dynasty became popular. It was originally a tragic record of a car accident in which a courtier knocked over the king, but because of the combination of oracle bone inscriptions and pictures, it abruptly made this incident quite joyful.

The middle part is the description of the car accident, which roughly means: King Wuding of Shang was hunting in a carriage, and the axle of the minister’s car suddenly broke, and the horse was frightened, bumped into the king’s car, and knocked over the car. This is a serious accident record, but netizens are still amused by the deformation of the oracle bone inscription “car”!

The normal car is written like this, which is almost the same as the real car:

After the axle of the courtier broke, the car became like this: (Everyone knows that the left wheel is broken)

After Wang’s car was knocked over, the writing style of the car changed again: (Well…it was completely turned over)

The picture is very strong, it is a serious “car accident” that’s right!

It has to be said that Oracle is still very strong in terms of similarity.

02 Xiaozhuan: unified characters, forming square characters

When it comes to fonts, why is Qin Chao missing?

Parents who understand Chinese history know that Qin Shihuang did a lot of great things after he unified the six countries, and the unification of fonts is one of them.

In the beginning, the large seal characters with complicated fonts were used, which was very inconvenient to write. The ministers were tired of writing memorials, and Qin Shihuang was tired of reading the memorials.

At this time, Prime Minister Li Si made a move, simplified the big seal script, changed it to small seal script, and promoted it nationwide!

Xiaozhuan has a standardized shape and beautiful fonts. Calligraphers have fallen in love with them since they were born. Many well-known calligraphers will have their own Xiaozhuan works. No matter how bad it is, there must be a Xiaozhuan seal.

03 Lishu: a font created in prison

Although Xiaozhuan is good, but there are too many rounded lines, it is time-consuming to write with a pen, so Lishu, which has a straighter shape and more simplified fonts, appeared.

There is another story about the creation of official script:

According to legend, the official script was created by a man named Cheng Miao in the Qin Dynasty. Cheng Miao initially worked as a small official in a county, responsible for transcribing relevant documents. Later, he went to prison for a crime. In prison, with nothing to do all day long, he remembered the torment he suffered from Xiaozhuan script when he was copying documents before, and he had the idea of changing the font. Not only did he think in prison, but after he was released from prison, he also collected and studied for several years, and finally created a simpler and more straight-forward official script. If the research is successful, there must be Bole! Cheng Miao wrote a memorial book of 3,000 official script characters that he had collected and researched successfully in 10 years, and presented it to Qin Shihuang. After Qin Shihuang read it, he admired Cheng Miao very much and promoted him to be a censor. The officials saw that this official script was really convenient, and they used this font one after another when writing memorials, and thus the official script became popular in the Qin Dynasty.

04 Cursive script: not only the words but also the hair are crazy

After talking about the Qin Dynasty, let’s also talk about the prosperous Tang Dynasty!

The Tang Dynasty developed well in all aspects. Kuangcao was created by people to express their feelings. Unlike Zhangcao, Kuangcao pays attention to the word “kuang”. Calligraphers who write wild cursive are also quite wild and unruly, the most famous one is “Cao Sheng” Zhang Xu.

It is said that he drank alcohol every time before writing, and when he drank to his heart’s content, he picked up his hair as a brush, and wrote with ink while walking. If there was a personality test in ancient times, Zhang Xu must be an ESTP! Others use essential oils for hairdressing, but he created the “ink hairdressing” method, using hair dipped in ink to write. The wild way of writing made people at that time give him a stage name – “Zhang Dian”.

Look at the wild grass written under this unrestrained temperament, it’s really unrecognizable! But it is his kind of “crazy” madness that makes him write such a grand and magnificent work.

After reading these short stories in Chinese script, do you feel that Chinese is more attractive? The elite mothers in North America have started to learn Chinese, and parents of Chinese-American families can’t lag behind!