Official script gives me a beautiful feeling---An interview with Jiang Zhiwen, a member of Guangxi Calligraphy Association

Recalling the first time he came into contact with official script, Jiang Zhiwen always couldn't help but feel a little moved. He gained countless happiness from copying and creating official script, and progressed step by step from amateur to professional. However, the boy who had taken him to appreciate the beauty of official script had long put down the pen in his hand.

At that time, he was still a senior high school student, studying hard all day long for the upcoming college entrance examination. A new repeater came to the class, and the teacher arranged for him to sit at the same table with Jiang Zhiwen. One day, Jiang Zhiwen saw his deskmate sharpening a pencil very solemnly, and then writing words one stroke at a time on the paper. He constantly changed the speed at which the pen in his hand advanced and smiled slightly, as if tasting a cake. Jiang Zhiwen watched silently and carefully studied the words written by his desk mate. The more he looked, the more interesting it felt. He felt a certain string in his heart being gently plucked. He asked curiously,"What is this?" The deskmate smiled slightly again,"This is official script."

From then on, Jiang Zhiwen fell in love with the calligraphy variety of official script, and he loved it for many years.

At first, he practiced hard pens, but later, he felt that writing with a brush would be more interesting. In this way, as he wrote, he became a member of the Guilin Calligraphers Association, and then he became a member of the Guangxi Calligraphers Association. In the future, he would be a member of the Chinese Calligraphers Association. Originally, I didn't want to get anything, but accidentally, I got a lot.

When practicing calligraphy, the first mental method is to be calm. When you are distracted, you cannot write well. In the past, when I was still a scholar, I was tired, so I shifted my mind from books to my hands and wrote a few at random. It was an excellent rest; after work, when I was tired or when I had a knot in my heart, sit up quietly and write, and my troubled mood would slowly calm down; Later, when I switched to writing with a brush, the convenience was not so good, and I had to set aside more complete time to practice, but I gained more than double the beauty.

"It's already a kind of enjoyment when we're still laying paper. That kind of happiness is similar to removing blind boxes." Compared with hard-pen calligraphy, the brush changes more. If the same word is written with different pens on paper of different textures, the washi and the paper will faithfully record the subtle changes in the body at that moment. The strength of the wrist, the subtle ratio between words horizontally and vertically, the micro information conveyed by the overall structure... the beauty that can only be understood but cannot be expressed can only be understood by those who have experienced it.

Calligraphy should be tasted slowly. A word is a world, and a single word can present the charm of dance, the majesty of mountains and rivers, and the charm of Xi Shi. If you look at it carefully, how to look between words, how to arrange them to echo, how to hide and reveal between strokes, which stroke should be round and which stroke should be folded, and how to configure the ratio between black and white is like a tube of thousands of flowers. It is ever-changing. If you think about it carefully, it is easy to achieve what the ancients said,"Forget both your heart and hands. The state of "no one and no one".

Everyone who practices calligraphy has to go through the process of posting, creation, re-posting, and re-creation. A temporary post is to feel the state of the owner of the post at that time. Sometimes, while I am here, I feel that I have really traveled through, through the Han Dynasty, where official script flourished, through the modern times, and through conversations with the sages of official script in successive dynasties. The quiet beauty is really charming. In 2020, the epidemic raged and everyone had to be quarantined at home, and so did I. I used temporary invitations to communicate with my ancestors and used creation to let myself go. The isolation that others found unbearable became a wonderful memory for me.

I often have this feeling. Many years ago, I fell in love with official script so quickly, perhaps because I vaguely realized that official script would make my life fuller and more complete. After so many years, this is indeed the case.