The impact of calligraphy on Chinese culture

One of the things about China that foreigners find most fascinating and mystifying is Chinese characters, hanzi. The thousands of ideograms are beautiful and completely different from what an English-speaker, who has grown up with the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet, is used to.

Chinese characters are never more artistic than when they are represented in calligraphy. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) inscribed Chinese calligraphy into its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.

It said, "In its distinctive Chinese form, calligraphy offers an important channel for the appreciation of traditional culture and for arts education. It is also a source of pride and pleasure for the Chinese people and embodies important aspects of the country's intellectual and artistic heritage."

Even after learning Chinese, it is still difficult to read much of the calligraphy, because it is written in different styles that make the characters more decorative but also harder to recognize. On April 14, however, I had the chance to speak to Duanmu Liyin at an exhibition of his calligraphy at the Jiangsu Administration Institute.

Duanmu Liyin is dean of the Funing Painting and Calligraphy Academy and a member of the Chinese Calligraphers Association. His works of calligraphy have been shown across China at competitions and showcases, some of which have commemorated the founding of the country and Party.

Displayed on vertical scrolls or horizontal sheets of paper, Duanmu's calligraphy in the lobby of the library came in five distinct styles. As he explained, these are the basic styles of Chinese calligraphy: regular script (kai shu), official script (li shu), seal script (zhuan shu), semi-cursive script (xing shu), and cursive, or grass script (cao shu).

Different scripts were used in different eras, and they are preserved by artists. Regular script is relatively modern, emerging during the Cao Wei dynasty in 200 CE. It looks like the standard kind of script used today.

"Regular script and official script are different in two main areas. The first is in the script. Official script is more flat-looking," Duanmu said.

"The second difference is in the strokes. The strokes of regular script are more structured, drawn a little slowly. On official script, the ends of the strokes have dynamic flourishes. Also, there is a typical point: 'hiding head and tucking tail.' The tails, the horizontal tails, and the tails on the strokes going down and to the right, they all have an upward curve."

Those two styles are easiest to read. The strokes are clear because the artist draws each stroke individually while lifting the brush.

On the other hand, cursive and semi-cursive are both drawn in flowing strokes where the pen often doesn't leave the paper. There is a word in Chinese to describe this called lian bi (连笔), which means a movement of the brush that links multiple strokes of a character. The cursive styles with lian bi are more flowing and impressionistic, less distinct. The characters look like they are moving, which could explain why semi-cursive is translated directly as "running script," and cursive is "grass script."

 It looks like blades of grass blowing in the wind.

Duanmu said, "The difference between semi-cursive and cursive is that cursive is written especially quickly. Semi-cursive also has lian bi, but it doesn't have as many lian bi as cursive does."

Finally, the oldest style of calligraphy still in wide usage is seal script (zhuan shu). It was the first style of writing used officially under the Qin, the first dynasty. It is has especially curved strokes, kind of like the original oracle bone script. Even a lot of Chinese people can't recognize it. Older yet is the oracle bone script, written on divinatory bones more than 3000 years ago, which some calligraphers still practice.

The content displayed in calligraphy is often ancient poems or Buddhist canon. Among the works Duanmu displayed was one of the Heart Sutra and one of a Tang dynasty poem. Some of the calligraphy was drawn alongside paintings of mountains and birds, but most of it was on blank pages. 

The addition of seals is also an important part of calligraphy, not just to identify the artist, but also to add meanings to the works. The Buddhist sutras included Buddhist seals, and one work displayed a dozen different seals.

The continuing practice of calligraphy will keep Chinese culture alive and inspire foreigners to learn Chinese.

Source: china.org

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