Cāngjié (仓颉）— Chinese Character Creator

As a part of the Chinese civilization, Chinese characters have been used not only in the communication between the Chinese people since the ancient time, recording the 5000-year Chinese history, but also playing its artistic role in the calligraphy, which becomes one of the glorious national treasures. But who made such beautiful characters? According to the ancient Chinese legend, it was Cāngjié who created the Chinese characters.

It was said that Cāngjié was an official taking charge of collecting history datum and materials under the leadership of Huángdì, tribal leader about 5000 years ago. At that time , people had to take their records by knotting with a rope or sculpting on the wooden or bamboo pieces. Cāngjié, as an intelligent young man, decided to make some signs which could be used to indicate people’s activities and ideas. He did a lot of researches and observations. Once, he climbed onto a hill by the lake, and suddenly found a big tortoise with cyan flower patterns on its back shell. He watched carefully and noticed that the patterns were arrayed regularly, which did create his imagination of using some kinds of fixed patterns to express people’s ideas.

By his careful observations of the star distributions, stretched directions of mountains and rivers, even the traces of all kinds of animals , he began to make numbers of scripts indicating these objects and things. He displayed his work and made it understood among people as well. Finally , Cāngjié did created successfully those characters , which have been called “ Zi (字）” by all Chinese people.

There was a very vivid story about Cāngjié’s making Zi that it was the day, in which Cāngjié created the characters , that it was raining with grains of millets during the day time, and it made the ghosts crying during the nigh! For the raining of millets, it meant Cāngjié’s making Zi, which could be used to transfer people’s meaning, and record events , was worthy of celebration. While the reason for the ghosts’ crying was just because the world would no longer be peaceful even to the world of ghosts since the creating of characters , which could lead to the enlightening of people’s wisdoms, deceitful and deceptive behaviors and even contest by killings.

As a matter of fact, according to archaeological discoveries, ancient Chinese had begun their records by carving on the animal bones or shells more than 6000 years ago. Many unearthed evidences show the fact that Chinese characters, in its special ideographical system, did take their shapes 4000 years ago. Though it was impossible for only Cāngjié himself to create the Chinese characters, Cāngjié should be one of the typical representatives who made the characters by observations, researches and experience accumulated from generations.