Six thousand years ago, the Chinese people created the Chinese characters（HANZI）. In the initial stages of character creation, people simply drew what they saw. Over the past six thousand years, Chinese characters have undergone a series of developments and transformations. The forms of Chinese characters have become increasingly distant from pictographs. Fortunately, some ancient HANZI have been preserved on oracle bones, bronze vessels, and in the dictionary named "Explaining and Analyzing Characters" (Shuowen Jiezi), allowing us to still see the connections between these character forms and their modern counterparts.
Take a close look at some of today's HANZI, and we can still find traces of pictorial elements, which can help us guess their original meanings. The Chinese characters inscribed on oracle bones are known as "oracle bone script", which was inscribed more than three thousand five hundred years ago. The characters preserved on bronze vessels are referred to as "bronze inscriptions," which date back three thousand years. The characters found in the ancient dictionary " Shuowen Jiezi " are from over two thousand two hundred years ago and are known as "Seal script" or "Xiaozhuan." Later, Xiaozhuan evolved into "Clerical script"(Lishu), which appears quite similar to the HANZI we use today.