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December 26, 2016

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Two outliers: different brush or no brush at all

CHINESE calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting have their outliers. At Shanghai’s Yuyuan Garden, two artisans set themselves apart from mainstream tradition.

Xia Sanjun writes Chinese characters with a wool felt pen, and Xu Xiangxi paints pictures with his fingers.

Chinese calligraphy and painting traditionally use brushes made of animal hair.

Xia practices what is known as “dragon and phoenix calligraphy.” It replaces the strokes of Chinese characters with colorful images that often have auspicious cultural meanings.

It’s not unfamiliar to most Chinese, who have seen this art form at folk fairs or festivals. It is, in fact, one of the oldest folk art forms in China, dating back about 2,000 years ago to the works of Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220) scholar Cai Yi.

The easy accessibility of tools for creating such calligraphy might be one reason why the art form is so popular.

Xia, a jovial 40-year-old from Hebei Province, uses eight “pens” and a pigment set bought from a stationery store.

His pen, about 5 centimeters in length, is a thin plastic strip bent over fire, with a tiny piece of woolen felt attached to its open end. To write with it, he dips the woolen felt in the pigments, usually in two colors, and applies it to the paper.

The rest is artistic imagination.

“The dragon and phoenix are the most popular, if not indispensable, images in this kind of calligraphy because they are very versatile in shaping the characters,” Xia says.

Besides the dragon and phoenix, birds, flowers, fish, the sun, pandas and bamboo are also recurring images in Xia’s calligraphy. A panda could make a dot, and a string of pandas could make a longer stroke.

“Everybody loves the panda, so I make sure to use the image in almost every piece of my calligraphy,” Xia says.

Not only are the lively characters charming to the eye, but they are also beloved by customers for the good wishes they symbolize.

The dragon and phoenix, mystic creatures in Chinese culture, are traditionally symbols of auspiciousness and celebration. Goldfish and flowers are signs of fortune. The sun represents great prospects for the future, and bamboo signifies progress and promotion. The peacock parading its large tail is a sign of peace and safety.

Xia says it’s easy for people with some artistic experience to quickly master the art. For the novice, it could take some months.

“Everyone finds it hard to control the pens at the beginning,” he says. “As always, practice makes perfect.”

Xia has been at it 13 years.

“In the beginning, my calligraphy looked hollow and messy, and it took me longer to think about what image I wanted to use to replace a stroke,” he says. “Now, I don’t even have to think about it before I start writing.”

Xia, who has worked in the Chinatown of Yokohama, says Japanese tourists remain the most enthusiastic foreign visitors of his work at Yuyuan Garden, due probably to the similarities of Japanese and Chinese characters. Westerners, too, show interest.

In fact, Xia says it’s possible to apply the art form to any language. At his stand, you can find calligraphy of names such as Laura and Putin. The “i” in Putin is imaginatively replaced with the image of a sailboat.

Xia’s colleague, Xu Xiangxi, is a 35-year-old native of Hunan Province. His untraditional approach to Chinese painting, or guohua, is to use his fingers only.

This technique, known as Chinese finger painting, is said to have been started by a famous painter named Gao Qipei in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). According to an ancient text, Gao, at age 90, decided to paint without a brush after a dream in which he found himself in a room with all four walls painted but only a pot of water in it.

Xu had been doing guohua for a long time, but he started painting with his fingers only six years ago, prodded on by his wife. At the beginning, he says, it was hard to control his fingers as he attempted to paint stones, mountains, rivers and trees.

“In my first pictures, the stones and mountains were hardly discernible,” he says. “I felt a bit frustrated because I couldn’t even reproduce a picture, much less create one on my own.”

At first, he had to tilt his head when painting to be able to see his fingers.

“But once I started to paint with my heart,” he says, “finger painting became something more natural.”

In finger painting, all parts of the hands can be used. There are no set rules. But the practice takes years of experience to master. The outside of Xu’s little finger has acquired an indelible black smear.

“The best finger paintings are those with the landscape distinctively painted and elegantly arranged, but also, in a sense, otherworldly, just like in any Chinese painting,” he says.

Painting as he does in all weather at Yuyuan Garden, Xu’s hands suffer.

“I get chilblains in winter, and in summer I struggle to keep my hands free from sweat so as not to affect the quality of my painting,” he says.

Xu’s artworks are favorably received by Chinese and foreign tourists alike.

“The Chinese love them because they’re just as beautiful as those painted with a brush,” he says. “And foreigners are wowed because the process looks so difficult.”

Both Xu and Xia say the Yuyuan Garden is an ideal work site.

“Compared with many folk gardens in the north of China, Yuyuan is rather small but compact,” Xia says. “That means craftsmen have more exposure to tourists. Yuyuan is such a must-visit for tourists in the city.”




 

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