China has a long history, but how much of these histories do you know? And how much about China do you want to know? Our part will leading you to appreciate the Chinese history and many other Chinese humanistic amorous feelings. Today, let us to learn about Chinese characters first.

Chinese is the language with the largest number of users in the world, and the script with the longest history.

It is difficult to determine the specific time when Chinese characters emerged. The oldest characters we see today are the scripts on the tortoise shells and animal bones in the Shang Dynasty (17th- 11thcentury BC) and scripts carved on bronze wares. Characters of the Shang Dynasty have been much developed, so Chinese characters might have emerged long before the dynasty, perhaps as early as in the New Stone Age about four to five thousand years ago.

We can see pictographic characters(象形文字xiànɡxínɡ wénzì) on porcelains(瓷器cíqì) with signs unearthed at the sites of the Erlitou Culture(二里头文化èrlǐtou wénhuà) and Dawenkou Culture(大汶口文化dàwènkǒu wénhuà). These pictographic characters and ideographic(表意biǎoyì) characters gradually evolved into relatively mature characters. After scattered(分散fēnsàn) and individual characters accumulated(积累jīlěi) to a certain number, a system of Chinese characters came into being through efforts of standardization. According to textual researches, primitive characters emerged in the middle period of the New Stone Age, and took about 2,600 years to basically form the system of Chinese characters.

This is the history of Chinese characters, in the future study, we will continue to talk about Chinese history, beautiful landscape, and many other interesting things, I will lead you know about “the China in fact you don’t know”.