The Spiritual Value of Chinese Characters The fourth part of Five Thousands Years of Chinese Characters is called Heart and Spirit of Chinese People.The theme of this part is to dig out and explain the spiritual value of Chinese characters.And also the Chinese culture pursues the internal transcendence.The difference between the signals of Chinese and Western lies in that every Chinese character is composed of spiritual value,and every Chinese character can tell you what is wrong or right and its statue in Chinese traditional culture.However,the signal of Western world has not the unique feature.BC240,Lv Buwei,the prime minister of Qin dynasty,called called for intellectuals to write a book which included everything in history,namely,Lv’s commentaries of History.He hanged in the the grate of the town Xianyang and said if anyone who can delete one word or plus one word to the great book,then the one can get a thousand gold for reward.At that time,the character(in Chinese“字”）developed from the symbol of prosperity of families to the generic term for the writing of Chinese characters.The Chinese character(字）implies concrete meaning.Such as,the character winter(冬）meant the ending of things before it used as a season in West Zhou.Eighty eight cellars were found in Hu Bei province.Some professors estimate more than 130 thousand Chinese jin millet can berestored in these cellars,which showed how flourishing the northern agriculture was at ancient time.In some Chinese characters,we can the shadows of agricultural tools.Chinese characters recorded Chinese agriculture clearly.In agrarian time,the level of productive force was quite low,the agriculture,in great degree,depended on nature,so people at that time preyed for blessing of Haven.The character human(ren/人) was created with the meaning of being reverent and respectful to Haven.Everything is developed in the order of being small to being big,but actually the core family is developed from the extensive family.The core family can not defend the natural disasters alone,so in agrarian time,people were lived together in community,in Chinese character,this community is called zu(族）。

This kind of community was united by blood relationship to fight against hostile community and plant crops.In the community of zu,another character was created,in Chinese fu(means father父）.From the construction of the character,the man held something signalizing power and majesty.Them when the core family was separated from the extensive family?This question followed the problems of Chinese salutations,another content of Chinese character.The Chinese dictionary ,Er Ya used single chapter to explain Chinese salutations.There were less than ten salutations in oracles and more than two hundredsalutations in Er Ya.The social relationship of human beings became more complex and also in the family house,the relationship between the family members changed.In Chinese characters,we have 弃(in English,abandon)which means to abandon weak or fragile children.And also the character 微(in English,also abandon),which means to abandon old men.The idea of cherishing the young and discarding the old was very normal in the earlier history.But China began to get rid of this corrupt custom bach to BC900,the character 孝(in English,being filial to old men) craved in a bronze in the form of a child supporting a old man with a walking stick.”of all virtuals filial piety is most important”indicated the social morality fully developed.The character 仁(in English,Benevolence)is the further development of 孝.Filial is to a family,but Benevolence is to the whole country.The characters 国(country)and 王(king or monarch) were both in the form of protecting the families or nationals.Baoheng（保衡）was a official position which meant protecting and defending for the whole country.The two characters were new creation by the first king of Shang dynasty.”Expend the respect of the aged in one’s family to that of other families; expend the love of the young ones in one’s family to that of other families”meant the whole China is a big family,and all the moral attitude from the inner family which used to treat your elders and young.This kind of value was familiar to Confucius,headvocated the value of “Benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and trust”which indicated the Chinese humanism.That is also the difference between the Chinese civilization and the Western civilization,the former focused on the inner pursuit of spirit and morality,the later focused on external pursuit of interest.Chinese characters contain the essential contents of Chinese cultures and values which only belong to Chinese land,any country can not achieve such degree.。