He Spoke In Calligraphy While Everyone Else Talked In Scribbles
Calligraphy, the visual art of writing is prized as one of most imperative arts in the China among the list of traditional arts. Chinese calligraphy has emerged together with the painting as unlike few other writing arts, it uses the same tools of painting like the brush and the ink. However, a thing that we don't know about calligraphy is that it is revered as a major fine art in Asian Countries and exclusively in China long before. During the reign of the Song Dynasty, the painting art took allied place beside calligraphy and due to the technique, form, strategy, and aim, it evolved more than calligraphy and joined high ranks.
Though the importance of Calligraphy faded in other parts of the world, China did its best to keep the status elevated. It has developed a culture which devotes power to calligraphy through words. This can be seen in the form of engravings and pronouncements done on the stone steles or the mountains either erected or hung in the outdoors posturing their authority. In fact, during the pre-modern times most of the Chinese scholars earned a decent living by writing words and also had dominant jobs in society both under public and private sectors.
Additional to the word power, the visual form is why calligraphy has gained importance in the Chinese culture. If you observe it carefully, the Chinese is very different when spoken and when written. You can't simply learn to write/read the Chinese as it doesn't follow a standard phonetic or an alphabet system. Each word has a unique symbol, or you can say character which is a diagram drawn abstractly, and therefore you need to learn them separately. After learning them, one has to undergo the laborious procedure of reading and writing till he/she gains the grip. To read the basic newspaper, one has to know 3000 characters in the least and to be called as an educated person, he/she should know 5000 characters. Scholars should gain knowledge of around 8000-50,000 characters on a whole even when most of them are not used much.
Therefore, you can only find a handful of Calligraphers who are proficient. Among them is the renowned Chou Yao-Zong, a 35-year-old from Taiwan. He works as an engineer during the daytime and spends his free time practicing calligraphy which he started in 2009. Ever since he received a total of 20 art awards and conducted many public exhibitions. During the 100th anniversary of China, he even displayed his works as a part of the "Painted Lantern Exhibition", at Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall on being invited by the Ministry of Education in 2011.
Standing as the best among the young artists of Calligraphy, he reads poetry and then chooses to write the sentences from it on learning them. He says that this way helps him gain a lot of knowledge and many characters that are indulged in the traditional literature. He says that finding the flexible, flamboyant and fluent literature is why he's able to progress on a constant basis. He uses brushes made of animal's hair as they tend to be smooth and rather stays at calm places. During the past couple of years, he started preparing exhibitions while stimulating on his creative ability.
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