Preface_ 上, 大, 人: The first and most beautiful typeface
Prologue_ The First Chinese Character

Chapter 1: Changes and Development of Chinese Characters

Knot tying | Knot | Cangjie | Pictograph | Brush | Oracle bone | Gold inscription | Gypsum drum | Li Si | From seal script to clerical script | Qin clerical script | Simple book

Chapter 2: Calligraphy Aesthetics

Horizontal strokes in Han Dynasty clerical script | Wang Xizhi's "Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection" | Steles and albums | From cursive to scribbled grass | Tang Dynasty clerical script | Calligraphy of the Song Dynasty | Yuan and Ming calligraphy and literati painting | Qing calligraphy reaching the common people

Chapter 3: The Ability to Detect

Wi Bu-in's "Brush Formation Diagram" | Lesson 1. Dot, Gobong Chu-seok | Lesson 2. One, Cheonri Jin-un (Thousand-mile Cloud Formation) | Lesson 3. Standing, Manse Go-deung (Thousand-year-old Withered Vine) | Lesson 4. Pichim?, Yukdan Seo-sang (Land-breaking Rhinoceros) | Lesson 5. Ik?, Baek Gyun No-bal (Hundred-year-old Crossbow Launch) | Lesson 6. Power, Gyeong No-geun Jeol (Strong Crossbow Muscle Joint) | Lesson 7. Chak?, Bungrang Lao-bun (Crashing Waves and Thunder)

Chapter 4 Chinese Characters and Modern Times

Chinese Characters on Architecture | Chinese Calligraphy and Contemporary Art | Ink: Smoke Flowing in Light | Albums and Life | Yunmen Calligraphy: A Dialogue with the Body | A Return to the Origins of Faith

Translator's Note 367
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The history of calligraphy, told in a beautiful epic poem
Steles and temples, plaques and couplets, signs and markings, dances and paintings… …

Chinese character calligraphy is something that I and myself live together.
It is the most true kind of consciousness.

_ Zhang Xun

About 5000 years ago,
The first Chinese characters symbolizing dawn and dawn appeared.
Letters were created between heaven and earth.
It was recorded on animal bones, metal, stone, bamboo, paper and silk.
In each era, there is caution and simplicity, exaggeration and euphemism,
The strokes of calligraphy are solemn and grand, and full of madness.
It completed the most concentrated expression of the aesthetics of each era.
Today, Chinese characters have neither disappeared nor been forgotten.
Rather, it will become more durable and vibrant.
Go out to the mountains, fields, or the sea and move around in various places of nature.
Looking at the beauty of flowing strokes
I hope you experience the pilgrimage of letters in your own life.

Letters are no longer just characters, but the beauty and joy felt in the hearts of those who feel and are moved by them.
Author Zhang Xun said, “Calligraphy is breathing, cultivating one’s health, exercising the body, expressing one’s individuality and temperament, learning to be human, praying for stability and protection in life, a memory in the reality of life, and returning to the original intention when one first learned one’s name through calligraphy.”


This book tells the ancient story of Chinese calligraphy with a unique aesthetic sensibility.
By presenting and reading calligraphy like a painting, it gives the feeling of walking through a calligraphy themed gallery from ancient times to the present.
Let the wonders of calligraphy and the joy within it bloom in our hearts.

Broadly speaking, this book discusses three things: the origin and evolution of Chinese characters, the history of Chinese character calligraphy, and the beauty of Chinese character calligraphy.
Before the four-eyed Cangjie created Chinese characters, the first written and calligraphic writing of mankind was a knot.
The reason is that it records historical events by tying knots.
It is said that when Chang-he invented Chinese characters in a world in chaos, the sky rained down millet, ghosts cried at night, and dragons hid deep.

The first written characters are recorded in textbooks as oracle bone script from the Shang Dynasty.
The hieroglyphs, such as the horse (馬) drawn on the mottled ox bones or turtle shells, are both pictures and letters, and they clearly show the greatness of Chinese characters as ideographic characters that have been passed down for 5,000 years and are still used today.

When Chinese characters are carved into bronze or stone, rather than oracle bone, they are called gold script or plaster script.
Of course, the materials on which Chinese characters were written were diverse, including silk, bamboo slips, and paper.
In the history of Chinese calligraphy, the first calligrapher whose name and works are passed down is Li Si.
The epitaph of Li Si, written to record the achievements of Qin Shi Huang, is considered an example of the generational change between large and small seal script.
If the seal script had a strong decorative character with round shapes like a faint fragrance rising, it became a clerical script with a circular shape that broke the circle into a square out of purely practicality and necessity, and after the clerical script was established, it changed from clerical script to regular script and has remained largely unchanged until now for over 2,000 years.

Hanja seems to be somewhere between eternal and immortal.
When the personality of the writer is reflected in Chinese characters, a unique style is formed, creating a calligraphy style and writing method.
When the writer's heart is reflected in the calligraphy and font styles, such as the hexagonal, the gwangcho, the longcho, and the goldcho, the aesthetics of Chinese characters reach their peak.
Wang Xizhi's "Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection" is one such example, Yan Zhenqing's "Jejilmungo" is one such example, Su Shi's "Hansikcheop" is one such example, and Xu Wei's "Cho-seo-si-chuk" and "Ban-saeng-nak-baek" are two such examples.

In this book, author Zhang Xun rediscovered the character of Xu Wei.
Xu Wei, who resembles Van Gogh, called himself a monster in his book 『Gibo』, written while he was imprisoned for seven years for murdering his wife.
Even in the book of Seowi's calligraphy, Donzuo, which was filled with strange and special fates, the hardships and frustrations of life are vividly portrayed.
His strokes of money have an unusually large number of pauses and breaks.
Every stroke is stubborn, stubborn, eccentric and self-willed.
However, his poems, which begin with 'half-life and half-white' and depict grapes and leaves that are clear and transparent, using the technique of splashing ink, strike the heart with the normal agony he suffered as an intellectual who could not achieve his goals, rather than the unfilial murderer who attempted suicide several times and was consumed by madness, anxiety, and impatience.
I wonder if the frustrations of reality, coupled with his extreme sensitivity and passionate passion for life, caused him to lose his motivation and soul throughout his life, despite his creative powers that most people cannot express.
If we follow the strokes of "Cho Seo Si Chuk," which is the pinnacle of the aesthetics of destruction, we come across a dead end surrounded by thick fog, as described by So Shi in "Hansik Cheop."
I am faced with an eerie beauty that makes me want to cry like Ruan Ji.

This book can be said to be the highlight of Zhang Xun's many works.
Most would be overwhelmed just describing the long history of the immortal Chinese characters, from their origins to the present day.
However, this book demonstrates its own true masterpiece by meticulously weaving together the beauty of Chinese characters and calligraphy, which have been elevated to art since their origins, from the perspectives of public and general, macro and micro.
Also, by mixing in interesting stories about representative works and real-life cases of each era, I sometimes get the illusion of reading a novel, and even a layman like me can become immersed in the beauty of Chinese characters and calligraphy.