Calligraphy literally means 'Beautiful Writing' and has been accepted and acknowledged as an art form in various cultures throughout the world. But the ancient Chinese calligraphy is unparalleled. Chinese calligraphy is a unique oriental art form to Asian cultures with a brilliant tradition as ancient as the culture itself. It is similar to painting and makes use of Chinese characters as an elementary vehicle to communicate and spread the divine world of the artist. Calligraphy uses a basic media, brush handling techniques, scripts, presentation and style to express the emotions, culture, artistic/creative feelings, and moral principles of the artist to the readers who may become overwhelmed by the power of application and the pleasure of beauty. Calligraphy is not just another way of writing Chinese characters, but a beautiful, elaborate and a stylish art of interpretation and a branch of learning.

The origin of Chinese calligraphy is not clearly known. According to a tale in ancient Chinese history, Chinese calligraphy is approximately 4000 years old and originated during the reign of the Yellow Emperor a man named Cang Jie. Earlier periods of the Chinese history reveal that calligraphy was viewed as a matchless and independent visual art form rather than merely an ornamental art and was highly regarded over painting and sculpture, and paralleled alongside poetry as a means of self-expression and cultivation. Calligraphy became an art during the reign of Qin Dynasty and started to blossom in the Han Dynasty. Jin Dynasty saw the emergence of some great calligraphers, including Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi. Achievements in the field of calligraphy were also seen in the North and South Dynasty and the calligraphy works in this period were called as Wei Bei. During the rule of Tang dynasty, calligraphy was taken more seriously; hence a lot of great calligraphers appeared during their reign, including Yan Zhenqing. With the fall of the Tang Dynasty, the decline of calligraphy began and the worst period was Ming Dynasty.

A brush, ink, paper and ink stone are the basic tools required to learn calligraphy. In order to learn calligraphy and to become a calligraphy expert, it is necessary to learn about these tools, select them carefully and take care of them and practice word by word and stroke by stroke. Chinese language has a set of different writing styles and scripts. The writing techniques basically revolve around the ways to hold and use the brush to write characters. The Chinese term qi bi implies beginning your stroke and the term shou bi means end your stroke. To write characters each stroke involves qi bi and shou bi.

Chinese calligraphy is rich, thoughtful, and far-reaching in content and has been admired and has received the utmost attention of the artists worldwide. Most recently, industrial art has adapted the elements of traditional calligraphy. The best example of application of Chinese calligraphy in modern times is the Lucent logo, a red circle done with a Chinese brush denotes the 0-bit of machine language. In this era of supercomputers and artificial intelligence, it is heartening to see the free form calligraphy reign.

Calligraphy dating back to the earliest day of history and widely practiced throughout China to this day uses Chinese words as its vehicle of expression. One does not have to know Chinese to appreciate its beauty because in essence calligraphy is an abstract art. While viewing a Western abstract painting, one does not ask, "What is it?" When viewing Chinese calligraphy, one need not ask, "What is the Chinese word?"

The selected single words from the works of many master calligraphers from the past illustrates the astounding beauty of the art. Like all art, it is best to simply look at them for enjoyment and look beyond questions of theory, technique, and literal meaning. Simply stated, beside each work is a very short comment is given to describe its style based on the classical book of Tu Meng.

Tu Meng of the Tang dynasty (618-905) developed 120 expressions to describe different forms of calligraphy and establish criteria for them. The first 15 from his list with explanations and English interpretations. For a flavor of these different styles, look at the calligraphy of a single word as written by the past masters. The idea here is not to learn how to write with a brush, or what the words are, but just to look at them as an abstract art.

A gracefully executed work has no peer
By Si-Ma Kuang, Song Dynasty

Bold yet fluid
From Ode of Mulan by Mi Fei

Formal
By Yan Zhenqing

Balance
By Wu Ju

Playful
By Li Juan (b. 1713)

A gracefully executed work

An exuberant work full of feeling and vigor.
By Wang Xizhi

A virile work in which strength is paramount.

By Zhang Zhengyu aka Chang Cheng-yu

The character is "mountain".