Chinese Calligraphy is an beautiful and sophisticated traditional art of writing Chinese characters of the Chinese culture. It has very long history of about a few thousand years. To be able to do this, you must first recognize the Chinese character and the meaning with a good foundation of the basic strokes and structure.

The Chinese language has evolved from various different writing styles and scripts to form the Chinese characters that we see today. There are about five types of Chinese Characters: Seal script, Official script, Cursive script and running script.


Seal Script is the most ancient of the calligraphy script. It is no longer in use except for calligrapher ans seal-carving. This script consists of Oracle script, Big seal script and Small seal script.

Official Script is used during the Qin dynasty by low-ranking official and common people. It is actually the simplification of the seal script from round strokes to square bending strokes which can be easily recognized and write faster. It was mainly used during the Han dynasty

Standard Script started at the end of the Han dynasty. It is much simplified than the official script and is the foundation script for learning Chinese calligraphy which consists of Southern and Northern dynasties, and Tang dynasty. The four famous styles are Ou style, Yan style, Liu style and Zhao style of calligraphy.

Cursive Script is a normal script that is written at the quickest speed and hence, become very abstract and simplified in structure. It is difficult to read, recognize and write. Only those at the advanced level and calligrapher are able to appreciate the beauty of the strokes.

Running Script is the combination of the fundamental of standard script and the beauty strokes of cursive script and therefore, is much more practical. It can be easily recognized and written smoothly.