Styles of Chinese Calligraphy

There are five main styles of Chinese calligraphy but each has many variations and individual calligraphers will personalize a style, adding distinctive brush movements and flourishes. All of these styles, even those dating from very early in Chinese history, are still in use by calligraphers today. See Selected Bibliography for more information.

Here are five illustrations of the various script styles for a single poem: Zhang Ji's 张继 "A Night Mooring near Maple Bridge" 枫桥夜泊:

English text:

While I watch the moon go down,a crow caws through the frost;
Under the shadows of maple-trees a fisherman moves with his torch;
And I hear, from beyond Suzhou, from the temple on Cold Mountain,
Ringing for me, here in my boat, the midnight bell.

In addition to the styles mentioned above, some calligraphers have reached even further back into history than seal script and explore very early scripts such as jin wen 金文i.e., metal script or bell and pot script used to inscribe bronze pots and bells. See Huang Shengchen below. Others modern calligraphers push ahead to explore the relationships of calligraphy and painting in fresh new styles. See Wu Tidy, Tang Feng, and Shen Hong Yu below.