Wisdom of Chinese Characters is a set of visual product to introduce Chinese characters and the relevant culture for Chinese learners. From the illustration of historical events and presentation of objects, cartoon pictures and stories about culture, readers will learn about the knowledge related to Chinese characters in a relaxed way and understand Chinese culture embodied in these characters. The DVD of Wisdom of Chinese Characters is exquisitely made with beautiful photos and cartoon pictures, vividly revealing the characteristics of the structure of Chinese characters and the essence of Chinese culture by various technical means, such as animation. It also provides commentary and caption in both Chinese and English.
The DVD is 60 minutes long and divided into 10 episodes. Each episode centers on a topic to tell about the origin and evolution of Chinese characters as well as their structures. It analyzes how Chinese characters reflect the wisdom of Chinese culture (for instance, the relationship between Chinese characters and nature, human body, life, architecture, customs and philosophies, etc). Then, it demonstrates the artistic beauty of Chinese characters as shown in calligraphy and how Chinese characters spread across the world.
This DVD is accompanied by a free booklet which includes the scripts of the DVD written in Chinese and English as well as 50 commonly used Chinese characters. These characters are primarily pictographs, each of which not only has been marked with pronunciation, English explanation, order of strokes, but also demonstrate in detail how a Chinese character evolves from a specific image to jiaguwen (oracle bone inscriptions), jinwen (inscriptions on ancient bronze objects), xiaozhuan (an ancient style of calligraphy adopted in Qin Dynasty), lishu (official script, an ancient style of calligraphy popular in Han Dynasty) and kaishu (regular script). At last, it provides three words related to this Chinese character (all of them belong to vocabulary level 1 and level 2) for learners to appreciate and study.
The accompanying book of this DVD is sold separately and has rich content.
The book of Wisdom of Chinese Characters, based on the DVD, is richer in content. It's both in Chinese and English, and is color printed.
Volume 1 Chinese Characters in Ancient Times
Volume 2 This Is How Chinese Characters Are Formed
Volume 3 Chinese Characters and Nature
Volume 4 Chinese Characters and Human Body
Volume 5 Chinese Characters and Human Life
Volume 6 Chinese Characters and Architecture
Volume 7 Chinese Characters and Folk Custom
Volume 8 Chinese Characters and Philosophy
Volume 9 Art of Chinese Characters
Volume 10 Popularization of Chinese Characters in the World