Lishu is one of the treasures in China's calligraphy art treasure house. It has a long history and runs through ancient and modern times. It is the second largest calligraphy style in China since its own documents. It runs through the Qin, Han, Wei and Jin dynasties, and is popular in the world with seal script as its representative. Although regular script occupied a dominant position after the Tang Dynasty, official script is still popular, even today. Lishu is still loved by people because of its neat structure, changeable brushwork, solemn and generous style and strong artistry.

It is a variant of the predecessor of regular script, seal script, after Zhou Qin and Kai Wei Jin, and it is an important symbol of the evolution of Chinese characters and calligraphy. Lishu is combined with Fiona Fang's calligraphy style, and the combination of anti-front, hidden front and back front. The writing style is oblique in the middle and front. Its typical brushwork is the wave potential and the picking method, so it is also known as the "silkworm head and phoenix tail".

There are different opinions about when Lishu originated.

According to Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi in the Eastern Han Dynasty? As the saying goes, "Qin burned the scriptures, washed the old ones, made meritorious service in defense, and there were countless officials and prisoners." At the beginning, there were official books, which were good for fun, and there was no ancient prose. "

According to Wei Heng's "Four-body Calligraphy" in the Western Jin Dynasty, "Qin used seal script, which played many things, and it was difficult to become seal script, that is, Li Ren (referring to a petty official) book, called Li Zi." There is another cloud: "Those who run official scripts can also carve seals."

"Six Classics of Tang Dynasty" says: "Five-sense writing is used for classics, table playing, public and private writing."

It is said that the official script was written by Cheng Miao, a calligrapher of the Qin Dynasty. Cheng Miao, the word Cen, was born in Xia Du in Qin Dynasty. He was originally a county warden, and he was very good at writing. Later, he was trapped and offended Qin Shihuang. He was imprisoned in Yunyang (now northwest of Chunhua, Shaanxi) 10 year. He felt that there were many official documents in the prison at that time, and the structure of seal script was complicated, which was inconvenient to write. So, he used his brains to transform it, sorted it out on the basis of the original seal script, simplified it, simplified it into a square, drew up a number of standard official scripts for daily use, and typed 3000 words. After seeing it, Qin Shihuang appreciated it very much. He not only pardoned his sin, but also took it as a suggestion and sent his official script to the official prison for application, so he called it "official script". In the Tang Dynasty, Yu Shinan's Shu Zhi Shu said that his book was simple and abstruse. Therefore, the world called Cheng Miao "the ancestor of official script".