Paintings of other sorts were common, especially on
silk. By the end of the Zhou Dynasty (ca. 1045–256 b.c.e.)
there were tens of thousands of silk paintings, but only one
from the Zhou survives, dating to the 400s b.c.e. Housed in
the Beijing Historical Museum and known as Lady with the
Phoenix, it was discovered in Changsha and is about eight by
twelve inches. In it, an elegantly robed woman in profi le looks
at a dragon and a phoenix.
Th e invention of paper in the 100s c.e. signifi cantly af-
fected Chinese art. Paper expanded a painter’s artistic possi-
bilities beyond silk by being cheaper and fi rmer. Calligraphy
was regarded as a fi ne art and oft en became part of paint-
ings, uniting into a form of storytelling that was created on
paper scrolls. On a scroll a single fi gure or landscape could
be depicted as if in motion, with the unrolling of the scroll
showing someone standing and turning around or showing
the passage of time in a single setting. Combined with the
calligraphic art, by the 400s c.e. scrolls had become short
moving pictures, telling tales about the Buddha, tales from
mythology, or even tales drawn from contemporary life.
CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY
Chinese writing inscribed on bones and turtle shells that
were used to foretell the future is known from as early as
the Shang Dynasty. Even in the 1500s b.c.e. Chinese writing
was taking the form it has today, creating a writing tradition
that has been unbroken for 3,500 years. Chinese is written
in ideograms, characters that represent an idea or thing.
Th ese began as small pictures representing objects such
as trees or houses; then such characters were combined to
suggest new ideas. During the Han Dynasty and thereaft er,
scholars were held in high esteem because they knew 40,000
to 50,000 individual characters.
Early in the Han Dynasty calligraphy came to be regarded
as an art form. Calligraphers used brushes lightly dipped in
very black ink that they mixed themselves to paint characters
on silk, bamboo, and wood. Th eir work was taken so seriously
that their brushes and bars of black pigment became works of
art themselves. Pigment came in beautifully embossed sticks,
and the grinding of such beauty to make ink impressed on
the calligrapher the importance of his putting the destruc-
tion of the stick to good use. Calligraphers developed styles of
their own and learned how to express emotions with the way
they stroked their brushes—fi rm or careless, fi ne or crude,
long or short. A form called cursiv developed, in which the
calligrapher’s strokes blended from one ideogram (written
symbol) down to the next in a constant fl ow. Th e invention of
paper revolutionized calligraphy by providing an inexpensive
surface that held ink well. It allowed nearly any educated per-
son to practice calligraphy, and some calligraphers became
famous for their styles.
Th e artist Wang Xizhi (321–379 c.e.) was China’s great-
est calligrapher. His preface “Lanting Lu” for a book of po-
etry, Meeting at the Orchid Pavilion, is considered to be the
pinnacle of Chinese calligraphy. It was written in fl owing
semicursive characters that melded ideas and ideograms into
images that its readers loved passionately. Th e emperor Taizong
(r. 626–649 c.e.) revered this work so much that he wanted
to have it with him in the next life, and he had it buried with
him. Only copies remain.CHINESE SCULPTURE
Th e history of Chinese stone sculpture is sketchy. Th ere are
stone carvings associated with the ancient rock paintings,
and such carvings that depict people wearing masks date
from about 3500 b.c.e. During the early Shang Dynasty
tombs were sometimes decorated with carved stone or ce-
ramic tiles portraying people, such as guardians to ward
off enemies and entertainers to make the next life pleas-
ant. Many tomb sculptures survive from the Han Dynasty.
Th ese were relief carvings in stone. Relief carvings have
fi gures projecting out from a fl at background. In the Han
reliefs, the fi gures themselves are slightly fl attened. Th ese
relief sculptures show scenes from everyday life and objects
such as peasants and fi sh. Th ere are many scenes of people
and animals during hunting.
The most spectacular tomb sculpture predates the
Han Dynasty by several years and was not in stone, but in
ceramic. The tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi (r. 221–210 b.c.e.)
in Shaanxi province has about 7,000 life-size figures of
soldiers, though as yet 80 to 90 percent of the tomb re-
mains unexplored. Although there seems to have been a
set pattern underlying the sculpting of each figure, the
soldiers are individualized with details such as improperly
buttoned jackets and different sorts of personal jewelry.
Each face and head is unique, as if every figure were mod-
eled after a real-life person.
Monumental public sculpture began in the 400s c.e.
Buddhism had been introduced to China in about 65 c.e.,
and by the 400s it had become a major part of Chinese cul-
ture. Sculptures of Buddha in the 400s resembled the Indian
style of sculpture, with fi gures having Indian features and the
serene grace typical of Indian depictions of human fi gures;
the garments shift ed from Indian ones to ones typically worn
by the Chinese. An example of this is the great 45-foot-tall
Buddha Amitabha from about 460 c.e. found in the Yungang
Caves in Shanxi province. His massive stone features are still
not Chinese, but he wears clothing typical of a Chinese man
of the 400s.CHINESE DECORATIVE ARTS
Elaborate decorations on the sides of pots, kettles, and
chalices indicate that the decorative arts were already well
advanced when people of the Shang began working with
bronze, suggesting a highly developed art of wood carving,
with the wooden works now being lost. Th e decorations on
bronzes featured abstract images such as crisscrossed pat-
terns and bumpy surfaces, but they also had images of ani-
mals and mythical creatures that were usually rendered in
a symbolic style that oft en make them diffi cult for modernart: Asia and the Pacific 103