Chinese literature

Chinese oracle bone
(Shang Dynasty, about 1500 BC)

People in China began writing about 1500 BC, more than a thousand years later than people in West Asia or Egypt, but earlier than anyone in Europe or Africa. The earliest writing that we know of from China was on animal bones, which are called "oracle bones" because they were used to tell the future. The writing on these oracle bones is the same writing that people use in modern China, just in an earlier version. The signs they used came from pictures, like Egyptian hieroglyphs or Sumerian cuneiform.

People in early China also wrote on strips of bamboo wood. Later on, people wrote on silk cloth, and then, about 100 BC, they invented paper to write on.

The earliest Chinese literature that we know of is from the Han Dynasty.

One of the most famous novels of early China is the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which was written about 1330 AD, during the Yuan Dynasty, by a man named Luo Guanzhong.

Here is a video with people reciting poems that were written during the T'ang Dynasty, and singing some old Chinese songs:

To find out more about Chinese language and literature, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:

Eyewitness: Ancient China, by Arthur Cotterell, Alan Hills, and Geoff Brightling (2000). For kids, with lots of excellent pictures.

Daily Life in China, on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276, by Jacques Gernet (1962).

The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the SungPeriod, by Patricia Buckley Ebrey (1993).

Women of the Tang Dynasty, by May Holdsworth (1999). A short introduction, with many pictures of T'ang period figurines.

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