A word is a cultural history.

Writing is the foundation of civilization and an important symbol of human civilization. Chinese characters are the most important carrier to record and inherit Chinese culture, and they are the cultural ties to build the Chinese nation’s sense of community, which invisibly influences and shapes the Chinese nation’s ideas.

Chinese characters record Chinese culture.

Characters are symbols of recording languages. Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the Shang Dynasty, is the earliest systematic and mature script in China, and has been able to record Chinese completely. As an original script, before Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Chinese characters had a long development process. Academic circles have been concerned about the formation and development of Chinese characters. When did Chinese characters finally form a system that can completely record the language? Meng Weizhi thought it was early summer, while Qiu Xigui thought it was the time of Xia and Shang Dynasties. The theory of "one series of three generations of characters" should be credible. Huang Dekuan once advocated that the characters in the late Shang Dynasty should be taken as a reliable starting point, and traced back to the early period, so as to make a reasonable speculation on the whole Chinese characters in the Shang Dynasty. This change from known to unknown is indeed a possible path to explore the formation and development of early Chinese characters.

The formation and development of Chinese characters are of great significance and must be explored in depth. According to the literature, "Cang Xie wrote a book, but it rained heavily, and ghosts cried at night" ("Huai Nan Zi Ben Jing Xun"). As for whether Cang Xie, the historian of the Yellow Emperor, created Chinese characters, we don’t need to delve into it, but the emergence of Chinese characters is indeed an earth-shattering and weeping feat. Chinese characters are super-epochal, which can cross the time barrier, record the long history of the Chinese nation and bear the civilization of the Chinese nation for 5,000 years. Chinese characters are super-regional, which can cross spatial boundaries and maintain information communication in different dialect areas of ethnic families, and people living in different regions can communicate smoothly.

"Thousands of years in ancient and modern times, tens of thousands of miles." Chinese characters break through the limitation of time and space and completely record and inherit Chinese culture. In front of countless Chinese sons and daughters, she is undoubtedly a long bond, firmly casting the Chinese nation community.

Chinese characters contain cultural mysteries.

"Every painting is learned." Observing each Chinese character statically, its glyph itself accumulates the profound mystery of Chinese culture. "The single body is a text, and the combination is a word." "Wen" is a single character, and the glyph itself cannot be divided; "Zi" is a combined character, and the glyph can be subdivided. Therefore, the word "Wen" can only be said, but the word "Zi" can be interpreted, and the name "Shuo Wen Jie Zi" is sincere. Xu Shen, known as "the ancestor of literate Sect", has long understood the mystery of "writing".

The older the Chinese characters, especially the pre-Qin characters such as Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen, the stronger their pictographic or ideographic elements, so they contain more cultural information of the word-making era. For example, the word "rainbow" of a rainbow is shaped like a [~ symbol ~] in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which looks like two big worms winding down before and after. This is in line with the legend that the rainbow has two songs and can drink the water from rivers. It is recorded in Oracle Bone Inscriptions that "a rainbow comes from the north and drinks in the river" (Oracle Bone Inscriptions Collection 10405), to the effect that a rainbow comes out from the north and drinks in the river. The ancients could not give a scientific explanation for the natural phenomenon of rainbow in the sky, so they imagined it as a bug drinking water in a river. Later, the glyph evolved into a combined Chinese character. In Shuowen, it is a knowing word from insects to Shen (electricity), but most of the time it is a knowing word from insects, that is, the "rainbow" that is still in use today. However, in the silk script, there was once a glyph from the sound of rain workers. No matter from "Shen (electricity)" or "rain", it shows that the ancients have realized the relationship between rainbow and rain.

In fact, every Chinese character is a vivid existence of China culture. Through the typical Chinese character configuration related to human body, animals and plants, we can perceive the colorful world; Through the typical Chinese character configuration related to clothing, diet and living room, we can understand people’s basic necessities of life. Through the typical Chinese character configurations related to sacrifice, war and marriage, we can know people’s manners and customs. Through the typical Chinese character configuration related to national territory, land and clan, we can feel the feelings of Chinese sons and daughters about home and country.

The evolution of Chinese characters witnessed the cultural inheritance.

It is even more magical to observe Chinese characters dynamically. In the era of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Chinese characters have entered a mature stage. Then, it went through bronze inscriptions, bamboo slips and silk books, seal characters and currency characters. From seal script to official script, from official script to official script, until today, simplified Chinese characters have been followed for thousands of years. In the meantime, although the form of Chinese characters has been constantly changing, its basic system has always been maintained, and its evolution can be clearly found.

Most of Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty carved with a knife, and a few wrote with a brush. It is time-consuming and laborious to carve words on Oracle bones, so it is necessary to change the circle into a square, to fill in the outline, and to change the thick pen into a fine pen. The difference between writing carrier and tools will have a great influence on the font. In order to facilitate writing communication, Oracle Bone Inscriptions has been simplified. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the characters were abnormal, the vulgar style was popular, and the simplification was prominent, which was a reflection of the great changes in economy, politics and culture at that time. The change of seal script into official script is the most important change in the evolution of Chinese characters. It makes Chinese characters change from characters that need to be drawn with the body into simple characters composed of straight strokes, which greatly improves the writing speed and contributes to cultural communication.

Chinese character recording language contains culture, and each glyph has its own times. "One word is a cultural history." Rich cultural connotation indicates that every Chinese character is a treasure that needs our efforts to develop. Strengthening the interpretation of Chinese characters, digging deep into the historical, ideological and cultural connotation behind Chinese characters, and refining and displaying the essence of Chinese excellent traditional culture are not only the inevitable requirements for inheriting and developing Chinese excellent traditional culture, but also the proper meaning for enhancing the vitality and influence of Chinese culture. (Author: Qi Hangfu, deputy director of Chinese Character Civilization Center of Zhengzhou University)