Chinese literature

this is quite rambling

Chinese literature is one the heavy hitters to historians as it has been well recorded and provides a fairly uninterrupted history of around 3000 years. Characters in the Chinese language have evolved gradually, but its grammar has changed dramatically in the last century.

Literacy was a bit of a problem in ancient China, by which I mean it took a while to really spread. Chinese poetry was handwritten for its aesthetic style. This led calligraphy to be an elevated method of writing which made it hard to learn without education. To be able to read such works required the knowledge of around 1,000 characters. This meant that rural farmers couldn't really understand the fancy scripts/wall decorations they hung in their houses. The end result to the slow spread of Chinese literacy means that regional dialects related but didn't match the elevated style and prose which was circulated. This allowed rural areas to understand texts with slightly different meanings, as some educated men would be able to read such works and give their interpretations.

The oldest recorded pieces of Chinese writing are found engraved into bones and tortoise shells dating back to the 8th-12th centuries BCE, and they show royal divinations. The first recorded collection of poetry, Shijing: Classic of Poetry, is dated to the early 500s BCE. A group of texts named The Five Classics have been studied and revered by historians since the 2nd century BCE. They relate the poetry, legal documents, rites, philosophical decision-making manual, and a moral commentary of judgement regarding government. These books provided the backbone for Confucian learning. It is also known that lots of old Chinese poetry was created to be sung along with music because the meter matched well with a singing cadence. By about 400BCE the prose had changed towards a more narrative/anecdotal style.

{ I'm realizing I have very little knowledge about Chinese history and cannot do thousands of years of history justice in a poorly thought-out blog post. When I think of empires I think of history of japan by bill wurtz , where he sings about the rises and falls of empires quite enthusiastically. The video has nothing to do with China! But it's filled with so much history that I'd never been taught. I think I watched it in 10th grade, and it stuck with me because it's the same guy who sings history of the world, i guess.) It's kind of interesting how not a single professor I've ever had has focused on Asian history when they go over world historical events. And through all of middle school and high school the focus was on European developments and North and South American development. With that in mind, I was reading a Britannica article on Chinese literature to try and educate myself and my head almost exploded there were so many names I had never seen before. }

The actual bit I wanted to focus on was the woodblock printing press, which was first used in the Tang Dynasty (619-907 CE). A wooden slab was hand-engraved, slathered with ink, and paper was pressed down to create copies of a certain text. One of the oldest pieces recovered from this time is the Diamond Sutra from 868CE, which is a Buddhist text on the concept of emptiness and perception. This predates the Gutenberg printing press (1440), in what is now Germany, which is a major topic for history classes in American schools. The next big invention was the moveable press (1450s), where individual characters were carved and arranged then stuck on a board to be inked and pressed. This made production faster as new woodblocks weren't being made for every new line of poetry or fiction, blocks could be cleaned and reused. Faster production led to dissemination of information regarding religious texts and philosophical teachings, which made studying for the Imperial Examination System easier. You had to pass a really long exam to become a member of esteemed society and a figure of prominence. It also aided the spread of literacy. More books spread around=more people trying to figure out what the squiggles mean.

China very much beat Europe in its invention of the printing press and rarely gets their due credit. The creation of the press aided the spread of information across Europe, which was a big deal and allowed for cultural expansion and religious diffusion through trade (including newly printed texts). This was something I loved learning about in school and will be interested in exploring further.