While recently working on a website, I grew tired of the system’s default Chinese sans-serif font and wanted to find a new one for reading. I recalled an article by Hehe Wenwang from a long time ago, where I learned about the differences in Chinese character forms across four regions:
In printed fonts, Japanese fonts reference the Kangxi Dictionary font, retaining many traditional forms, but they have already diverged from traditional Chinese characters. Korean fonts, having abolished Hanja (Chinese characters), also retain the traditional Kangxi Dictionary forms. Current national standard fonts and Taiwanese logo fonts differ significantly from traditional forms.
I’ve been looking for an elegant, classic font. The Kangxi Dictionary font is the standard for traditional characters, and the Kangxi Dictionary font created by Li Xiangchen of Wenyue Technology is currently popular online. However, this font doesn’t have a complete character set and there’s a trend of overuse.
I was accidentally drawn to a font on Zhihu: Jinghua Lao Songti.
This font was created by Terry Wang and is based on the 61-1 font created by the Beijing Xinhua Typeface Factory in 1961.
What is 61-1 typeface:
“In the early days of the People’s Republic of China, all industries were literally in a state of ’everything waiting to be rebuilt,’ and the publishing industry also needed new typefaces to meet printing demands. In 1961, the Beijing Xinhua Typeface Factory organized the design of the 61-1 Song typeface. Later, they designed a traditional Chinese typeface with 6183 characters, mainly for printing the main text of ancient books.” "
This typeface was designed by the Beijing Xinhua Typeface Factory in 1961. It was adapted from the Japanese Tsukiji Meicho movable type and was used in the renowned Zhonghua Book Company’s Twenty-Four Histories, as well as various annotated ancient books and old textbooks. Before the adoption of new typefaces and the transition to phototypesetting and computer fonts in the 1980s, it was very familiar to Chinese people.
1975 edition of Reading the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government
Selected Works of Mao Zedong (vertical edition)
*Terry Wang created a version based on this classic typeface." Jinghua Old Song Typeface. The author used AI to complete the Unicode basic character set, so there’s no worry about missing characters. It not only includes all basic Chinese characters, new and traditional character forms, but also Japanese and Korean character forms, all encoded simplified characters, and Vietnamese Nôm characters.
I tried this font and it feels great.
“The peach-shaped dots, goose-head hooks, and triangular shoulders are very characteristic of the Old Song typeface, more substantial and rounded than the most commonly used Song II typeface today… It’s closer to the present day than the Ming Dynasty typeface, so the layout is more neat and beautiful, less worn and rustic, and more elegant and formal. However, it hasn’t yet been standardized by new character forms; a hint of rebellion hidden beneath its serious exterior is quite wonderful.” Original article link: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/637491623