Overview of Chinaology

Chinese characters were created by the Chinese ancestors. Chinese language is the official language in the people`s Republic of China. According to the world records of ancient language systems, hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt, Sumerians` cuneiform, and the oracle bone inscriptions in Shang Dynasty China are the three oldest language characters.
  The origin of Chinese characters can be dated from 3000 years ago when the oracle bone inscriptions was a very mature character system in Shang Dynasty. This kind of characters was found in 1899. The Chinese characters styles have gone through a long period of development, including oracle bone inscriptions, Jin Wen, Xiao Zhuan, Li Shu, Kai Shu, Hang Shu, Cao Shu, and so on.
  The whole process could be divided into two stages. The first stage is from oracle bone inscriptions to Xiao Zhuan; the second stage is from Li Shu to the latest characters. The former one belongs to the scope of ancient character, and the latter one belongs to the scope of modern character. In general, there has been no big difference about character styles since the period of Li Shu to present characters.

There are more than 1.5 billion people using Chinese characters. These places are China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma and other Chinese communities around the world. However, the use of Chinese characters varies in different places. The reason is that the present Chinese character can be classified into two styles, the simplified and the traditional. The simplified characters are used in China, Singapore, and Malaysia. On the other hand, Taiwan and other Europe areas use the traditional styles. Recently, with the development of cultural exchange in different places, people living in Taiwan and HongKong use both the simplified and the traditional styles. However, the traditional style is preferred when doing some official documents in Taiwan. The Malaysia and the Singapore governments push the simplified style to the public.