Chinese Calligraphy

Calligraphy is the essence of Chinese culture. About 1,000 written languages have appeared in the world. First, they are used to record events and what people want to say. In writing, people strive to make the script look beautiful and elegant. To meet special needs, they are written in artistic style. The writing of Chinese characters has developed into a special advanced art.

Chinese calligraphy has been developed for thousands of years. Just like painting, sculpture, poetry, music, dance, and opera, it is an official member of the artist's family. Calligraphy can be seen everywhere in China and is closely related to daily life. In addition, it leads to other art fields the number of people practicing.

Signs with inscriptions of famous people are often found in shops and shopping malls, adding antiques to the busy and noisy trading area.

The calligraphy works also decorate the living room, study, and bedroom. Chinese characters are written on rice paper that is good at absorbing ink. The work will be pasted on a piece of thick paper with silk edges, and then mounted on a reel or placed in a photo frame to hang on the wall. Usually, the calligraphy work contains a poem, a couplet, or a motto that the host likes very much. If the calligraphy work is written by the owner himself, it will show his ambition and interest as well as his literary or artistic talents. Calligraphy works can bring vitality to the white walls and satisfy guests and friends.

The Spring Festival couplets are calligraphy works specially made to celebrate the Spring Festival, the most important traditional festival of the Chinese people. This couplet is written on the doorpost, door panel, wall, or pillar of the house with red paper. The characters on the couplet always express good wishes for the year.

Characters in special styles are displayed as newspaper or magazine header inscriptions or as book titles. The six characters represent the words written by the People's Bank of China on Chinese banknotes, written by a famous calligrapher. The calligraphic characters or drawings on the folding fan show the user's elegance. It is no exaggeration to say that the Chinese people are inextricably linked to calligraphy.

The first photo album of the newborn baby congratulated his elders with pen and ink; when he married, the pillowcase was embroidered with the calligraphy-style "double happiness" symbol; on his birthday, a big man hung in the house, meaning calligraphy The style of "longevity". After his death, the inscription on the tablet in front of the tomb was written by a calligrapher. Visitors can see calligraphy works in the pavilions, towers, and buildings of various attractions. Calligraphy like this: 天下第一关 in the gatehouse and horizontal plaque at Shanhaiguan entrance.

The inscriptions on the wooden boards or rocks blend in with the surrounding landscape and add luster and beauty to it. The Shanhai Pass Gate Tower at the eastern end of the Great Wall was built in 1381, 300 kilometers from Beijing. From the tower, visitors can have a bird's eye view of the sea and the magnificent mountains. There is a horizontal plaque under the eaves of the gatehouse, engraved with five huge Chinese characters, meaning "the first pass under heaven". They were written by Xiao Xian (1368-1644), a famous calligrapher of the Ming Dynasty. The patches complement the magnificent surrounding scenery.

If you visit Mount Tai in Shandong Province, you can visit the stone valley of Buddhist scriptures east of Longquan Peak, where calligraphers carved Buddhist diamond scriptures of the sixth century on a flat rock of six thousand square meters, each character 35 square centimeters in length, the largest The one is 50 square centimeters long. However, out of the 3017 original characters, only 1067 are clearly identifiable.

In Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province, your guide will take you to visit the Orchid Pavilion, a holy place for Chinese calligraphers. In the spring of 353, Wang Xizhi, who later became one of China's most outstanding calligraphers, and 40 other letters gathered in the orchid pavilion, drinking and writing poetry. Wang Xizhi wrote a 324-word preface for "Lanting Preface" on the spot with exquisite calligraphy, making Lanting famous. His calligraphy is known as "the first hand under heaven". Unfortunately, the original version of this Preface was buried with Emperor Tang of the Second Kingdom, Li Shimin, who was also an outstanding calligrapher. The preface we see today is a copy of Feng Chengsu in the Tang Dynasty.

The forest of steles in the ancient capital Xi 'an is the oldest and best collection in China and a treasure house of ancient Chinese calligraphy, art, classics, and stone carvings. In the exhibition hall, gallery, and pavilion, there are more than 2,000 stone tablets and plaques of Han and Tang tombs and pavilions. Founded in 1087, the Forest of Steles is part of the Shaanxi Provincial Museum and is one of the key cultural relics under state protection.

There are strict standards and guidelines for evaluating calligraphy skills and works. Calligraphy skills prove the cultural background, artistic level, and emotion of calligraphers. Throughout the ages, many famous calligraphers have been painters, thinkers, politicians, or scholars. When talking about a person's calligraphy achievements, he always mentions his achievements in other fields. Excellent calligraphy works were held to demonstrate outstanding ability and outstanding learning ability.

Calligraphy is the first art Chinese learn. In teaching children to read the text, parents and teachers not only showed them strokes but also tried to arouse their aesthetic awareness and develop their artistic judgment and creativity. This is very helpful for their future lives.

People call calligraphy "painting without images, music without sound, stage without actors and actresses, and buildings without components and materials." Calligraphy works express different basic elements of beauty through different shapes and forms of lines, their combination and movement methods, including balance, proportion, diversity, continuity, contrast, movement, change, and harmony. Calligraphy has also inspired other arts and vice versa.

Like music, calligraphy takes rhythm as its main element. The dots and strokes of light and dark ink or round or square shapes show obvious rhythms, such as the changing and moving music rhythm, expressing the thoughts and emotions of calligraphers and musicians. It is no wonder that calligraphy theorists praised calligraphy as "music in the sky" or "wonderful music played by outstanding musicians."

In addition, calligraphy works can show the beauty of body and movement, such as the art of dancing. Both have artistic characteristics related to time and space. Calligraphy and dance can learn from each other. The cursive calligraphy master Zhang Xu of the Tang Dynasty is famous for his unique rhythm and wild style. Legend says that after he was inspired by the dance performed by the famous dancer Gongsun, his calligraphy developed rapidly. Through unique rhythm and neat movements, the dancers show various charms and emotions, such as vividness, joy, sadness, anger, longing, demand, boldness, and inspiration. Zhang Xu's cursive calligraphy works, Li Bai's poems, and Pei Min's sword dance were praised by the emperor at the time as three wonders. The four calligraphic models of classical poetry are one of the few calligraphic works handed down by Zhang Xu in history. The characters used in this work are bold and unrestricted and are linked together like a character. The spacing between characters varies greatly.

In the 1980s, a TV station in Beijing broadcast an art program entitled "Ink Dance", which also showed calligraphy and dance art. In the context of calligraphy, the dancers displayed dance moves based on the character's meaning and shape. The brisk pace, gentle waist movements, and soft music inspired the audience's imagination.

Calligraphy has a closer relationship with traditional Chinese painting. Use brushes and rice paper. The difference is that the former uses only black ink, while the latter uses various colors. Calligraphy, as an art, coexists with other arts. In the bookstore, calligraphy works are sold with paintings. In some exhibitions, calligraphy works are displayed alongside paintings. Usually, painters leave some space for calligraphers to write classical poems or poems related to poems and scenes to increase their appeal. If there is a poem created by the painter and himself, the picture will be more charming and tasteful. In the past, an artist who was good at poetry, calligraphy, and painting was called "three talents". Since the Tang Dynasty, many such talents have been trained in each historical period.

Calligraphy and painting have many communication skills. The traditional painting draws inspiration from calligraphy, using brush and ink, especially in the field of abstract meaning and freeing yourself from the constraints of concrete objects. Chinese ink painting originated from simple and smooth calligraphy brushstrokes. Qi Baishi's shrimp painting is a good example of this kind of ink painting. Qi drew a few simple strokes of shrimp with different inks. Without any specific description of the water, people can see the water flow of the and smell the refreshing water fragrance.

Calligraphy's leadership and leadership in various arts, like mathematics in various natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, geology, and meteorology. Generally speaking, mathematical theory is abstract, but it deeply reflects the relationship between space and mathematics. Therefore, all schools attach great importance to mathematics education. Natural scientists rely on good mathematical knowledge to study profound mysteries and master the principles of the natural sciences they are engaged in Lao Zi, a great Taoist philosopher 2500 years ago, said: "The Way is mysterious and profound, and it is the door to all kinds of wonders." Here, I applied his maxim to Chinese calligraphy. I think it is mysterious and profound is the door to all kinds of art.