Chasing Moonlight : Unveiling the Journey of Chinese Characters

Do you like the moon?

When its soft light shines upon you, you may feel calm down.

Ancient people had lots of imagine in the moon.

In ancient China, poets described the moon as a silver plate, jade, and more.

Some people imagined that there were a rabbit or a toad on the moon, and the other people thought there is a great palace and Xian (Taoist immortal) lived.

As a natural phenomenon, the character of “月 moon” was, of course, created early.

Let’s take a look at the following picture.

If you ever read my last article, “When we draw a circle and named it “Sun” : Unveiling the Journey of Chinese Characters”, you will notice the characters for “日 sun” and “月 moon” are similar in shape.

As the most conspicuous presence in the sky, people combined these two characters later, and create the character “明”, which means bright (adjective).

Isn’t that interesting?

Let’s back to the business.

Although the character “月 moon” is simple and doesn’t have much else to say, I need to point out a feature.

Have you noticed that some characters in the picture of are facing left, while others are facing right?

In fact, the earliest characters don’t follow a strict rule regarding which side they should face.

Later on, the rules for the characters were established in Qin dynasty (about 2000 years ago), gradually forming what we see today.

Next time, when you look at the moon, will you remember this article and guess why the ancient Chinese engraved this shape as the moon? Or you will start to search for the Chinese stories of the moon, and find a good bedtime story.

See you next time.