Tang calligraphy - The art of fine handwriting

One of the most important innovations of history was the scrapping of the numerous ways of writing the characters of the language that had been developed in the kingdoms. In their place was substituted a standardised script that was intelligible from one end of China to the other. This proved to be a most effective and enduring bond of unity because of the nature of Chinese script. This is based not on a limited number of signs expressing the phonetic elements of a word but rather a large number of symbols or characters, each of which denotes an object or an abstract concept. The system is precisely that used in the West for figures.

Another important factor in China's cohesiveness is the existence of a single written language that goes back several millennia to the earliest Shang dynasty. This written language is of special significance because it is understood by Chinese from all regions, speaking dialects as different from each other as Italian is from Spanish, or Swedish from German. The reason it is understandable to all is that is consists of characters representing ideas or objects. These characters are pronounced in different ways in different parts of China, but the meaning of any character is the same no matter how it pronounced. It is as if an Italian, a Swede, or an Englishman took the figure 8 and pronounced it in their various tongues, the meaning to each of the three still would be the same. This common written language has been an important force in providing unity and historical continuity to China. In fact, the Chinese method of writing has been adopted in whole or in part by most of the surrounding people, including the Japanese, Koreans, and some of the Southeast Asians.

The early Tang calligraphers in Chang'an followed the style of the Wei and Jin times with fine, fluent and graceful features. Calligraphers Ouyang Xun, Yu Shinan, Chu Suiliang and Xue Ji were known as the "Four Great Calligraphers of early Tang". The prosperous Tang period witnessed drastic changes of style in calligraphy. Zhang Xu stunned the world of calligraphy with his "mad grass script".

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