David on Formosa

On Saturday afternoon I went to Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei where I discovered an exhibition* of calligraphy by Master Hsing Yun (星雲大師), the founder of Fo Guang Shan (佛光山).

As I wandered around the exhibition some ladies who were volunteers invited me to sit down and write some calligraphy. There must have been some yuanfen (緣份) involved in this because the last time I had done some calligraphy was on a visit to Fo Guang Shan near Gaoxiong about four years ago. I clearly remember that occassion. I spent about an hour laboring with the brush, constantly aware of the imperfections in my calligraphy. When I finished a nun came to me and said something like, "It doesn't matter what the calligraphy looks like on paper. It is the intention in your heart that is the most important thing." I kept this in mind as I wrote today.

My very bad calligraphy

I have never formally studied calligraphy and have only tried to do it perhaps half a dozen times. It is an art form that I admire though. The calligraphy I wrote only involved tracing over the characters, so it is not really as difficult as writing free hand. If you want to learn to write Chinese then making some effort to learn calligraphy is worthwhile. Knowing the correct stroke order is important for writing calligraphy. Through practice you can better understand the structure of the characters.

In the modern age though the skill of writing Chinese is becoming less important. It is so much easier to type Chinese characters on a computer. As a student of Chinese I have found it useful to be able to write neat Chinese characters for copying down names and addresses or noting new words, but I have not really invested much time and effort into learning to write every character. Just learning to read Chinese characters is difficult enough already.

* If you are interested in visiting the exhibition it is on the second floor of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. Opening hours are from 9:00am to 5:00pm and it runs until 28 August.