Chinese characters were initially meant to be simple pictures used to help people remember things. After a long period of development, it finally became a unique character system that embodies phonetic sound, image, idea, and rhyme at the same time. The writing system, which was extremely advanced in ancient times, began with inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells, and these are regarded as the original forms of Chinese characters. Afterwards, Chinese characters went through numerous calligraphic styles: bronze inscriptions, official script, regular script, cursive script, running script, etc. Chinese characters are usually round outside and square inside, which is rooted in ancient Chinese beliefs of an orbicular sky and a rectangular Earth. The five basic strokes of Chinese characters are “---“ (the horizontal stroke) “│” (the vertical stroke), “/”( the left-falling stroke), “\” (the right-falling stroke), and “乙” (the turning stroke).
