Oh, no! Suddenly a big black ink stain appeared up on my nearly finished calligraphy work. With the stain, all my efforts were in vain.
Situations like this are common when practicing calligraphy — which I practiced when I was fourteen — and at first, I had to start over every time. Eventually, I came to understand why this happened. Everything about Chinese calligraphy is soft—from the rice paper to the fine hairs of the bamboo brush. Whenever I even lightly touched the tip of the writing brush to the paper, the tip would instantly fold and bend inward, giving me the illusion of litheness in my clumsy stroke — I would soon relax my hand and remissly drop my brush on the paper, creating an ink stain.
I once told my calligraphy teacher, a stout man with thin, hoary hair, about my blunders. He asked me, puzzlingly, to touch his hand as he wrote with the brush. When I placed my hand on his, I was shocked by the power he exerted on his brush. He was holding the brush so tight that it seemed as if he was exerting his full weight on that brush. “Calligraphy is not only a practice on the fingers,” he explained. “It exercises the whole body.”
When I first started learning calligraphy, I was told that the key as well as the challenge is to take control of every stroke. However, it did not occur to me until now that the control needed for a seemingly delicate stroke required a tremendous exertion of strength. Some calligraphy teachers even pace around the classroom and surprise their students by yanking the brushes out of their students’ hands — mid-stroke. If the student succeeds in holding onto his brush — he has mastered the first step of Chinese calligraphy.
Calligraphy reminds me of Taichi, a traditional Chinese boxing art, which has often been mistakenly deemed “soft boxing.” The exterior actions seem so gentle and smooth that people cannot help but relax every part of their bodies. However, the fact is that the legs, arms, hands, and even each finger are full of amazing power, one that requires strength of mind and heart.
Calligraphy — and also Taichi — has taught me that things are not what they always seem on the surface. With people, things, actions — sometimes the softest things are the most powerful.