Summary

Chapter 1 of Wendan Li’s Chinese Writing & Calligraphy offers a quick overview of the main issues and topics covered by the author. The section begins with abrief definition of Chinese calligraphy, its characteristics, and significances to the people of China. In particular, based on this chapter, Chinese calligraphy identifies the core of Chinese art and is considered the quintessence of Chinese culture (Li 1).

Most importantly, Chapter 1 outlines the text’s three key objectives and a short but detailed historical background of writing and calligraphy in Chinese Society. For instance, Li underscores the importance of language in communication especially to Chinese who believe that “language means the creation of Chinese characters” whose invention is attributed to CangJie (Li 5). Li also describes the artistic qualities of Chinese writing (pg.16) as well as the different abilities, which can be learned through the practice of Chinese calligraphy (pg.18). The chapter winds up with the author’s message to learners with no background in the Chinese language.

The sixth chapter, on the other hand, covers the nature of Chinese written signs. Additionally, Li uses this section to describe the different classifications of the signs in regards to their composition. The chapter further examines the components of Chinese writing alongside their functions. Moreover, to shade more light into the nature of Chinese calligraphy, the section compares its formation and elements with those of alphabetic languages.

According to this section, a unique characteristic of Chinese writing is that it has retained its logographic nature. Nevertheless, like other logographic language symbols, the original logographs and pictographs, which Chinese writing initially used have progressivelyadvanced. Similarly, the number of characters has increased significantly since the Han dynasty. The five character categories include pictographs, indicatives, semantic compounds, borrowings, and sematic-phonetic compounds.

The first type, pictographs, are written signs, which physically resemble the objects they represent. Indicatives, on the other hand, refers to characters that are formed by the addition of a stroke to a symbol to imply a new meaning. By contrast, “semantic compounds” combine different compounds to form a new character whereas a “borrowing” representsan additional new meaning by use of existing characters. Li finalizes the chapter by introducing readers to “dates in Chinese according to the Western Calendar.

Reflection

Based on the two chapters, it is evident that Wendan Li’s bookis one of the most valuable resources for the learning of the Chinesewriting system and language.For example, as shown in the first chapter, Liassumes that his audiences do not have any previous knowledge of the subject. This assumption allows the author to integrate ideas from different materials collected over several years to equip Chapter 6 with rich contents. Thus, the two chapters, which mainly focus on how Chinese characters are developed and formed, act as a suitable guide for beginners. I particularly liked a detailedhistory of Chinese culture, calligraphy, and language presented in the first chapter. The section was interesting because it allows one to appreciate the origin of the Chinese writing system and style as well as the people who contributed to its development.

Chapter six, on the other hand, demonstrates the uniqueness of Chinese writing. For instance, as explained in this chapter, most of the world’s ancient logographic languages have revolved by adopting an alphabetic scheme. However, it was exciting to notice that Chinese writing has remained logographic. It has thousands of characters even though it does not show pronunciation directly (Li 74).

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