Yantai, a national-level historic and cultural city, boasts rich cultural deposits. Wang Yirong, known as the“father of oracle bone characters”, was born in Fushan district, Yantai. Recently, three foreigners from Pakistan paid a visit to Wang Yirong Culture Exchange Center at the invitation of “Touch Shandong”column to take a close look at the oldest Chinese characters.

“The Chinese characters niao and zhui are typical pictographic characters, both refer to birds but with tails of different length”, said Wang Yin, the great-great-great grandson of Wang Yirong, while he gave the foreigners a lecture about the oracle bone characters.

Inscriptions on oracle bones were first found in the Yin Dynasty ruins in Anyang of Henan province. The oracle bones recorded many respects of the social life in the Yin Dynasty including not only politics, military, culture and social custom but also astronomy, calendar and medicine.

Muhammad Basil Khan has just lived in China for three weeks and knows very little Chinese. But he can recognize the oracle bone characters of niao and ji. Wang Yin explained that characters on oracle bones are pictographic words, so foreigners can identify them even though they may not know the Chinese words.

“Zhui refers to a bird with short tail and likes living in group. It was not a single Chinese character later but only a component. Any character with the component of zhui is related to birds. ”Wang Yin explained to the foreigners.

Babar Rizvi knows some simple Chinese characters. He was astonished about the Chinese characters after learning the word-formation rules. “The Chinese characters have undergone a long evolution process from the ancient oracle bones inscriptions to the modern Chinese characters. I am in awe of the ancient Chinese people’s wisdom,” he said.