Chinese oracle bone inscriptions over 3,000 years old are now being widely used as emojis by young WeChat users, thanks to a person who made them closer to people’s life.

　　中国有着3000多年历史的甲骨文正在被年轻的微信用户们作用表情包广泛使用，这多亏了一个人让它贴近了我们的生活。

　　“The ancient characters are not as cool and distant as they are supposed to be. In fact, they are cute and humorous, and they could totally serve people’s needs for online expression,” said the creator Chen Nan.

　　该作品设计陈楠说：“甲骨文看似高冷深沉，其实它很可爱，还带点戏谑，完全符合我们当下的表达方式。”

　　The 46-year-old professor of fine art at Tsinghua University has been working to make oracle bone inscriptions into emojis. For example, the character for “zui,” which means “drunk” in English, was created to look like a stumbling figure. Such vivid figures have been well accepted by WeChat users.

　　这位46岁的清华大学美术教授一直致力于将甲骨文的文字转化为表情符号。例如，“醉”这个字，(英文意思是喝多了)，它被设计的看起来就像一个歪歪斜斜的倒着的人。这些生动的文字很受微信用户的欢迎。

　　Chen has also combined the ancient Chinese characters with cartoon figures. A cartoon video clip featuring oracle bone inscriptions designed by him was viewed 31 million times and shared 140,000 times.

　　陈还将这些古文字与卡通形象结合在一起。一个由他设计的甲骨文动画视频浏览量达3100万次，被转发了14万次。

　　Chen embarked on the road of innovation 19 years ago. In 2016, the ancient typeface was included into the font library under his efforts to let the ancient words walk into people’s life.

　　19年前，陈楠就走上了这条创新之路。在他的努力下，2016年甲骨文被纳入字体库，古老的文字走进了人们的生活。

　　Now the library has 3,500 characters, but Chen’s research on the project still continues, as he plans to extend the library to 7,000 characters. In the future, he will apply the ancient characters to education and the development of games and apps.

　　现在，甲骨文字体库里已有3500个汉字，不过陈楠的研究工程仍在继续，他计划将字库扩容至7000字。将来，他还打算将甲骨文元素融入文化教育产业、小游戏开发、APP等领域。