Chinese characters have gone through a long process of evolution, and various fonts such as Oracle Bone Inscriptions, inscriptions on bronze, seal script, official script, cursive script, regular script and running script have appeared one after another. Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which was popular in the Yin and Shang Dynasties, refers to the characters carved on the bones of tortoise shells. Its main features are thin strokes, mostly Fang Bi corners, irregular shapes, different sizes and many variant characters. Bronze inscriptions refer to the characters on bronzes in the Western Zhou Dynasty. There are many variants. Seal script has different sizes, generally referring to the characters of Qin State in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Small seal script refers to the standard font compiled and popularized after Qin Shihuang unified the six countries. At this time, the strokes were simplified and the variant characters were basically abolished. Lishu is divided into Qin Li and Han Li, and Qin Li basically got rid of the pictographic features of ancient Chinese characters. Han Li evolved from Qin Li, leaving almost no trace of seal script. Regular script flourished at the end of Han Dynasty.

Cursive and running scripts are auxiliary fonts. Both appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty.