Chinese character is one of the world's oldest writings. Even in the Shang Dynasty which was 3,000 years ago, oracle bone inscription, a well-developed writing, already existed in China. The specialists and scholars' investigation and research indicate that the pottery inscription etched in the pottery wares which were unearthed in Yangshao Cultural Relic more than 6,000 years ago was China's oldest writing.

   In ancient times there was a very popular myth named "Cang Jie's Invention of Characters". According to this myth, Cang Jie, a historical chronicler of the Yellow Emperor over 5,000 years ago, was inspired by the footprints of animals and understood that different prints could be treated as marks to discriminate different objects, so he invented a lot of symbols to represent different objects and affairs, and they were the oldest Chinese characters. Of course, this was only an interesting myth. The appearance and forming of any kind of writing would take a long course and could not be invented by an individual. From the scientific perspective, Chinese characters were created by the whole people in their long-term working life.

    In the long course of history, the Chinese characters had experienced several times of evolution before they took the present form.

     Oracle bone inscription was a writing etched in tortoise shells in the Shang Dynasty. Inscription on bronze, also known as bronze ware script, was a kind of writing cast in the bells and tripods. Large seal script widely used in many vassal states in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period was more regular and symmetrical than bronze ware script in writing. Small seal script was used in China after Emperor Qin Shi Huang's unification of whole China, and its structure was simple, writing method was changeless and character pattern was more orderly. Clerical writing was a kind of writing used in the Han Dynasty, and it developed from the small seal script. Regular script firstly appeared in the late Han Dynasty, and it has been used by the people generation after generation to this day because it is much more simple and easy to be written than the clerical writing. Regular script is the formal writing style in our daily life and business. Born in the late Han Dynasty, the cursive writing is difficult to identify because it is written in a quick way and its strokes are cursively connected with each other, and this kind of writing is usually seen in calligraphic works.

     We can see from the evolutionary process of Chinese character in the past thousands of years that the general trend of Chinese character's development is moving towards simplicity. It abandoned complicated forms and adopted more simple forms gradually while abandoned difficult forms and adopted easy forms, which not only simplified the character pattern but also reduced the number of characters, and in this way the Chinese character continuously overcame the shortcoming of being difficult to be remembered, written and identified.