Calligraphy is the most representative art and cultural form in China culture. In ancient times, pure calligraphy was just a pen and ink game for literati to express rationality. Calligraphy has no independent form of expression, it depends on Chinese characters and often takes poetry as the carrier. Ancient poetry is a comprehensive holographic form, or combined with poetry, or combined with calligraphy ink.
The essence of ancient calligraphy in China is to write poetry, and calligraphy and poetry are integrated in form and quality. Only the writing of poetry was defined as calligraphy by the ancients. Later generations don't stop there. All the ink of the ancients, including writing government decrees, or inscriptions or letters, were studied by later generations as precious calligraphy materials. This is a broad concept of calligraphy in later generations.
Everyone knows that learning calligraphy requires learning from the ancients, but what do you want to learn from the ancients? What does calligraphy want? This is very important. It must be said that later generations have a deep misunderstanding of calligraphy, one of which is to confuse the practicality, artistry and culture of calligraphy.
Calligraphy is a practical writing form of Chinese characters. The calligraphy category defined now almost coincides with the development of Chinese characters. This is a typical practice of defining history with later concepts. For example, Oracle Bone Inscriptions researchers such as Dong Zuobin and Luo Zhenyu developed Oracle Bone Inscriptions into an art form of calligraphy, and we take it for granted that Oracle Bone Inscriptions was the "creation of calligraphy" of the earlier ancients.
This is actually a misunderstood concept, just as many people think that Su Shi and Wang Anshi are just writers. Before the Han Dynasty, the form of Chinese characters was only practical, and the writer did not have the physical and mental state called calligraphy art, nor did he write these contents for the purpose of creating art, but for practical application. The writing of government decrees and epitaphs left by calligraphy is such an example.