Watch picture and learn character (21）Drum - 鼓

 The Evolution of character Drum

From left to right

 

Shell bone, bronze, small seal, and clerical scripts

Drumming 

 

The pinyin of character Drum：Gu3

 

Explanation

 

Shell Bone Script of character Drum: The left is a drum we learnt in the section of character Happy, the right is a drumstick held by a hand. A person is drumming. Actually, the character should be called Beat drum, not Drum. But why it made the verb to be a noun, I don’t know.

 

Bronze script of character Drum: The left is similar. The right top drumstick is changed a lot, the bottom is the hand.

 

Small Seal Script of character Drum: Similar to bronze script.

 

Clerical Script of character Drum: Similar to small seal script.

 

Watch picture and learn character (20) Happy - 喜

The evolution of character Happy

From left to right

Shell bone, bronze, small seal, and clerical scripts

  

Ancient Drum

 

Ancient Drumming and Singing Artist

 

The pinyin of character Happy：Xi3

 

Explanation 

Shell bone script of character Happy: The top is a drum. 

One line is missing because the shell bone script is not unified, there are different forms of the character Drum. The bottom is a mouth. When the artist beats the drum, which is a sign that the show would start soon, the audiences are smiling because they are happy for the upcoming show. 

Bronze script of character Happy: Similar to shell bone script.

Small seal script of character Happy: Similar to big seal script.

Clerical script of character Happy: Some similarity to older scripts, but all curves are straight lines now, lost most pictography.

Two character 喜 form a new informal character “Double Happiness” as the one below

 

Which is widely used in China, as long as you see big “Red Double Happiness” character on door, window, the wall of room, the window of car, you should know that some people are getting married right now, and just married a few days ago. Therefore, Double Happiness is the most used character in China because most people could use it at least once in their life. 

 

However, it is not official character, you can’t find it in any dictionary. Strictly speaking, it is not accepted by experts, and government. But no one says it is wrong, and all people have used it for at least hundreds of years. 

 

I hope that the experts recognize this contradiction, accept it as formal character, and include it in the dictionary 

Watch picture and learn character (19) Pot - 壶（壺）

The evolution of character Pot

 

From left to right

Shell bone, big seal, small seal, clerical scripts, and simplified song typeface

 

Ancient Liquor Pot

 

The pinyin of character Pot：Hu2

 

Explanation 

Shell bone script of character Pot: A ancient pot with two ears on the sides.

Big seal script of character Pot: Similar to shell bone script, but the two ears changed to a circle, which is odd, not real.

Small seal script of character Pot: Similar to big seal script.

Clerical script of character Pot: Some similarity to older scripts, but lost most pictography of the original script.

Watch picture and learn character (18) Deer - 鹿

The evolution of character Deer

From left to right

Shell bone, big seal, small seal, and clerical scripts

 

 

Deer

 

The pinyin of character Deer：Yu3

 

Explanation 

Shell bone script of character Deer: The horns are on the top, the head and the body are in the middle, the legs are in the bottom.

Big seal script of character Deer: Similar to shell bone script. 

Small seal script of character Deer: The 山on the top is the horn, the left side of head is not closed, and the line extending to the left bottom, very odd. The body is not closed too, very odd too. The legs are normal. The reason why the small seal script changed this way is unknown.

Clerical script of character Deer: The top dot is the horn, very odd. The middle is similar to small seal script except the left stroke connected to the top horizontal line. The legs are not real any more. 

Watch picture and learn character (17）Feature - 羽

 The evolution of character Feature

 

From left to right:

Shell bone, big seal, small seal, and clerical scripts

 

 The pinyin of character Feature：Yu3

 

Explanation

Shell bone script of character Feature: Two wings of the bird with three white features on each side, and the small fluff (the two dots).

Big seal script of character Feature: Similar to shell bone script with no fluff. 

Small seal script of character Feature: The wings are much longer than that in older scripts, more features and bent downward.

Clerical script of character Feature: The shapes of wings are similar, but the features inside are not, lost most pictography.

Watch picture and learn character (16）See or Look - 看

Hand, we learnt in previous section.

 

From left to right

Big seal, small seal, and clerical scripts

 

Eye, we learnt too in previous section 

 

From left to right

Big seal, small seal, and clerical scripts

 

Put the two together, we get a new character: See or Look

 

The evolution of character See

 

From left to right

Big seal, small seal, and clerical scripts

 

Putting your hand on your eyes is See.

 

 

Famous Monkey King is seeing or looking forward

 

The pinyin of character See or Look：Kan4.

 

Explanation

Big seal script of character See or Look: The top left is character hand; the bottom right is character Eye.

Small seal script of character See or Look: Similar to big seal script, but the top hand middle line turns twice to left in order to give more space for the character Eye in the bottom.

Clerical script of character See or Look: The middle stroke of character Hand becomes a falling down left stroke, to give more space for the character Eye on the bottom. 

 

Note：

It is ideogram character which is formed by two pictogram characters, here are Hand, and Eye, both have certain shapes, drawable. The new character See or Look is to describe an action (verb) without certain shape. To make a compound character from two independent character is the popular way in Chinese to expend its express verbs, adjectives which have normally no shape.

Watch picture and learn character (15）Bamboo - 竹

The evolution of character Bamboo

 

From left to right

 

Shell bone, big seal, small seal, clerical scripts 

 

Bamboo Leaves

 

The Pinyin of the character Vehicle is Che1.

 

Explanation

Shell bone script of character Bamboo: Two bamboo branches and leaves.

Big seal script of character Bamboo: Two bamboo poles with leaves dropping down. 

Small seal script of character Bamboo: Similar to big seal script.

Clerical script of character Bamboo: The leaves on the top, one is falling down left, another extending horizontally. The right pole has a hook in the bottom, not like real bamboo.