Essays on Chinese Calligraphy
To My Children
By Fu Shan
When I was around twenty I copied one by one Jin and Tang's regular script that handed down from the older generations, but I could not even make a close copy. Later I obtained Zhao Mengfu and Dong Qichang's calligraphy by chance. Touched by their tactfulness and elegancy, I started to imitate their style and my imitations looked genuine after a few rounds of copy. The reason is simple: if one learns from men of honor, he will find his models too high to match; if one associates with men of inferior rank, he will soon take on the manner of his company and mix up with them before he realizes it. I despise Zhao and Dong's personality, and my dislike extends to their calligraphy. So I returned to Yan Zhenqing whose handwriting my great-grand father and great-great-grand father admired. I practiced hard, but his wrist control was difficult to imitate. Then I understood why Dong called Zhao the master of last five centuries. To be a calligrapher is to be a upright person. Zhao actually followed the model of Wang Xizhi, but he took a wrong path which inevitably degraded him into a weakly beautiful style. This demonstrates that the hand always reveals the mind, and a small discrepancy can lead to a great error. So rather be clumsy than deft, be bad-looking than ingratiating, be fragmented than cunning, and be forthright than planned.
Fu Shan (1607 - 1684)
Poem
Ink on Rice Paper
The Palace Museum, Beijing
Manchus conquered China in 1644 when Fu Shan, a Ming scholar, was 37. Seeing it beneath his dignity to co-operate with the conqueror, he entered monkhood. Out of his scorn for those who ingratiated themselves with the alien ruler, he found obsequious quality in the latest popular master-calligrapher Zhao Mengfu, a royal descendent of Chinese dynasty Song who gave up his honor to fawn on barbarian Mongols.
Essays on Chinese calligraphyChinese Calligraphy
Home | Contact | Rice Paper