Introduction

Who holds the brush today

INTRODUCTION

WHO HOLDS THE BRUSH TODAY

People think that children can't write, but that is not the case. The calligraphy of young people is actually much better than the writings of old men. These authentic old gentlemen who write well are very rare now, it is just the opposite of the general perception. People think that the writing of old gentlemen is so good; they think: the older the better. But in fact, the opposite is true. In the case of China now, it is: the younger the better. (Beijing calligraphy teacher Jian Meng, interview 18)

After I enter the house of my calligraphy teacher, a 61-year-old man from Suzhou who has been living in Europe for decades, and I start practicing my still awkward brush strokes, the first thing he tells me is to relax, sit straight, clear my mind, imagine the space where the character will have to fit in, focus on my body and think of nothing but the black ink and the white paper in front of me. This was after I was finally allowed to pick up the brush myself – during the first weeks we spent our lessons only looking at the models made by traditional calligraphers, and think about the balance and shape of their characters. My teacher embodies all the characteristics of the archetypical Chinese scholar: a slightly absent and friendly man, working in a studio stacked to the ceiling with thumbed manuscripts, catalogues and rice (xuan 宣) paper covered in skillfully brushed characters. I followed his classes to prepare myself for the fieldwork on calligraphy that I would conduct in Beijing later that year. Once immersed in the different discourses of calligraphy there, I experienced how calligraphy is bursting at the seams of the confined framework I had considered it was in. China is, famously and evidently, saturated with calligraphy. Public buildings carry signs with calligraphic captions; landscapes are adorned with inscriptions of literati from imperial times; squares, pavilions, parks, even subway stations in Beijing have engraved stones with calligraphy; and mastheads of daily newspapers feature famous writings in calligraphy. Calligraphy permeates everyday life; or more precise: seeing calligraphy on a daily basis is virtually unavoidable. Its significance in China is difficult to overstate, and both

11 discourses of theoretical and practical calligraphy should be considered a vast and rich cultural field spanning more than three thousand years, leaving little about the practice undiscussed. Both Jian Meng, quoted in the beginning, when she remarks that the general public envisions old gentlemen when they think of calligraphers, as well as I were led by the same stereotypical impression that this vast cultural field seems to inflict: calligraphy is an ancient, culturally-specific and elitist form of art that is practiced by older – and wise – men, and it looks roughly like what the word calligraphy itself promises: “beautiful writing”. As a derivation from the Greek terms kallós κάλλος (beauty), and gráphein γράφειν (writing)

(Hertel 2017), the English term seems self-evident. In Chinese, shufa 书法 is used: shu 书 refers to “writing” and fa 法 can be translated as “method”. The Chinese term shufa thus more aptly signifies calligraphy as a process of mastering skills, and this mastering is, importantly, done through copying. Approaching calligraphy first and at its most basic as a method of writing, helps in understanding its national significance as well as the pervasiveness of the abovementioned stereotype both in China and the west. The written Chinese language, standardized in the third century BCE, has worked since as an effective unifying mechanism throughout the vast empire and across the long span of history, because the writing system is character-based: the meaning of the character is unaltered when pronounced in accordance with a literate person’s local dialect. The ruling elite, therefore, used the written word more readily than speech to convey messages to its subordinates, and an intimate connection between the elite and the written word developed. As all writing systems, Chinese writing too embodies power, and John Fairbank notes that “The two great institutions that have held the Chinese state together– the ruling elite and the writing system have coexisted in mutual support for three thousand years” (1987, 3). This elite, united by writing skills, self-identified as men of words. Lothar Ledderose argues how “the aesthetic and stylistic unity within the calligraphic tradition both reflected and confirmed the social coherence of the educated elite” (1979, 3). This class of (aspiring) rulers wrote calligraphy, and as Yuehping Yen notes, “if power indeed writes, then it is only logical to expect that a good handwriting speaks more powerfully than a bad one” (2004, 15).

Over time, more significance, connotations, contextual references and alleged qualities were stacked up on the written characters, which have remained remarkably similar in shape throughout the centuries. By the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE), having good calligraphy skills formally became one of the four criteria in selecting men for office1, as handwriting was considered revealing of a person’s moral character (McNair 1995, 265) – a point of view that will frequently return in this dissertation as it prevails tenaciously in the present day. Writing calligraphy became a cultural rite for the elite, a way to read one’s educational background, intelligence, moral integrity and physical vigor, and even acquired magical properties as a mediatory tool between gods and humans in Daoist rituals; but also, in the everyday lives of common people, who would, for example, not burn papers with characters on it out of respect for the written word (Kraus 1991, 45–50; Yen 2004, 150). This is a custom that a retired man I met in a park in Beijing still remembers doing when he was a child. I happened to meet this retiree in the park, where he writes calligraphy – but his calligraphy is not what it used to be when he was young: I find him wielding a large brush made of trash. With a piece of foam, a plastic bottle cut in half and an old umbrella stick, he is writing with water on the tiles of the park purely for his leisure. Concerns about whether or not to burn calligraphy out of respect for the written word have evaporated like the characters on the tiles: time, wind and sun have dissolved them before our eyes. It is at this junction, characterized by a striking difference of attitude towards calligraphy, that this dissertation inserts itself. How is it possible that in the span of one lifetime, this elitist high art could morph into a water play in the park? And is that, perhaps, just the tip of the iceberg? In recent years, starting around the beginning of the 1980s, the cultural field of calligraphy has shifted and incorporated itself into many different domains. Now, practices of calligraphy are multi-varied and have become popular in the literal sense: it has become a widespread practice, and a growing number of people are now practicing calligraphy in different ways, many speaking of a prevailing shufare (书法热), a “calligraphy fever”. Who is now making calligraphy, and how are they doing that; what does their writing afford if it is no longer a tool

1 According to the New Book of Tang (Xin Tangshu 新唐书), juan 45, 1171: “There are four [areas considered in] the method for choosing men for office. The first is stature: a physique and appearance that is handsome and imposing. The second is speech: the vocabulary and diction to debate truth. The third is calligraphy: a regular script that is powerful and beautiful. The fourth is judgment: logical writing that is excellent and strong. Success in all four areas, then, is the prerequisite for conduct [in office]” (in McNair 1995, 265).

13 to climb the bureaucratic ladder? Or is it perhaps, still, also that? How has technology affected calligraphy? What, actually, is calligraphy now, and who decides where these conceptual boundaries lie? Central to all these questions lies the fundamental puzzle: what does it mean to make and consume calligraphy today? With the increased adaptation to a globalizing world but also the current nostalgic retreat from that adaptation, the developing and increasingly international art market with its own particular desires and demands (Kharchenkova 2017) and the discourse of creativity now playing a leading role in governmental policy to boost economic development in the context of the creative industries policies (Keane 2006; Keane and Chen 2017; X. Gu and O’Connor 2006), the notion of “calligraphy” continuously stretches, is pulled apart, re-imagined and remediated. At the same time; what calligraphy promises to deliver to those making and consuming it has also changed. The arguments of this dissertation revolve around this juncture. I argue that calligraphy is related to technologies of the self; it is connected to desires and demands of the government; and finally, it is entangled with the workings of Chinese society. The enmeshing of calligraphy with these three spaces will form the backbone of this research and lead to the main research question of this dissertation:

How is Chinese calligraphy entangled with technologies of the self, government and contemporary society?

I explore ethnographically how different practices of calligraphy are entangled with these three concepts. Five central themes will be studied in five corresponding chapters to answer the main research question, namely (1) education; (2) vernacular creativity; (3) criticality; (4) new media; and (5) creative consumption. In each chapter, these themes are explored through a case study of calligraphy, as the table below shows. These categories should be read as heuristic tools that help understand and compartmentalize the different practices observed ethnographically, and are not a reflection of the complexity of the field at large. They intentionally do not correspond to binary distinctions between “high culture” and “low culture”, as this binary tends to divide artistic cultural productions of a certain educated class and leaves the rest as marginal, or “popular” – a notion that I specifically aim to problematize in the context of contemporary practices of calligraphy. Although within the

14 scenes of calligraphy such a binary conception certainly still persists, I aim to show that calligraphy as a cultural practice has moved away from an exclusive association with high art to many spheres of cultural endeavor.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

Calligraphies Traditional Water Contemporary Digital Calligraphic

calligraphy calligraphy calligraphy calligraphy fonts

Themes Education Vernacular Criticality New media Creative creativity consumption

Objects of - Calligraphy - Water - Wang - WeChat - Calligraphic study studios, calligraphers Dongling Group font designs University at Ditan and - Zeng Xiang Handwriting Calligraphy MA, Taoranting - Qiu Zhijie Temperature BA tracks and Parks in - Calligraphy elementary Beijing app Ink Pool schools Fieldwork Interviews, Interviews, Interviews, Interviews, Interviews, methods (participant) (participant) object analysis object object analysis observation observation, analysis object analysis Theoretical Governmentality Vernacular Distribution of Remediation Chineseness, concepts (Foucault) creativity the sensible (Bolter and Governmentality (Burgess), (Rancière) Grusin) (Foucault) everyday life Nostalgia (de Certeau) (Boym)

This does not imply that it is straightforward to decide what cultural practice falls within the category of “calligraphy”, and what should be defined differently. Much of this research is concerned with the boundaries and rough edges of the definition of calligraphy – not because I aim to achieve a final definition of the concept, but because it is a concern for my interlocutors in these fields: when does something stop being calligraphy and become “modern art”? Does physical exercise by way of water calligraphy automatically mean that

15 the practitioners are calligraphers? What technologies of the self are constructed when calligraphers deny – as they often do - that their practice is art and rather call it “just playing around” (zhi shi wanr 只是玩⼉) with the brush? What happens when the calligraphy that you make is ephemeral? Why is what is done in the past taken so much more seriously? If calligraphy is now prevalent in so many different domains of everyday life, how then does it affect these domains? How do all these distinctions, and the communities indexed by them, shape the field of calligraphy, and how in return, do their calligraphies shape these communities? Because calligraphy has traditionally been closely related to the functioning of the government and sustained through education, chapter one starts off with exploring calligraphy education today by looking at the motivations and aspirations of students; it scrutinizes educational rhetoric on Chinese traditional culture, moral rectitude and physical discipline through a Foucauldian lens of governmentality. Chapter two focuses on practices of water calligraphy in the public parks in Beijing. It asks what type of calligraphy is created by whom, and how those calligraphies can challenge the idea of creativity as the domain of a young urban class, while its ephemerality contests ideas that (urban) creativity should necessarily be instrumentalized by being forced into structures of commodification and governmentalization. Chapter three explores the junction of contemporary art with modern types of calligraphy. Chapter four researches the large field in which contemporary (visual) culture unfolds today, the digital realm, and asks how remediated digital calligraphy facilitates nostalgia. Chapter five looks at creative calligraphic font design and probes how the digital sign relates to the calligraphic sign, arguing that tactics of Chineseness underlie the creative design. The final chapter then presents my conclusion. I explain what we have gained from combining five sets of data on calligraphic practice, approaching these as a discursive field. Lastly, I reflect on my research process, and I present a future agenda, suggesting directions that new research could take.

CALLIGRAPHY IN EXISTING LITERATURE

The historical status of calligraphy as an elite pursuit has made sure that literature on traditional Chinese calligraphy in China abounds.2 In the west, traditional Chinese calligraphy is conventionally the domain of art historians (see for example Murck and Fong 1991; Ouyang and Fong 2008; C. Liu, Ching, and Smith 1999; Ching 1999; Richter 2015; Yee 1974; Barrass 2002; Hay 1983; Nakata 1983, Ledderose 1979). Typically, the framework of these works is set up around biographical information on well-known master calligraphers who are exemplary of a specific style that is widely employed. The themes touched upon often revolve around composition and technique, the importance of writing in the Chinese context, and the relationship between calligraphy and painting. These works usually start by tracing the evolution of Chinese calligraphy, from its pictographic origin through the development of the calligraphic script. Apart from a vast volume of books on how to write and appreciate Chinese calligraphy, mainly written by hobbyists, (Asian) art collectors and often calligraphers themselves (see for example Yue 2005; Lei 2004; Li 2010; Z. Qiu 2005) an extensive literature on calligraphy published in catalogues exists that is supplementary to museum and art gallery exhibitions – their content is specific to the artworks on display. Standard works on Chinese literature and writing often include a few paragraphs in their opening chapters on calligraphy as a by- product, or a historical background to the topic of Chinese writing (see for example Boltz 1994; Billeter 1990). A smaller strand of research on calligraphy coalesces around one particular style of calligraphy, or one famous calligrapher belonging to a certain school or period, and includes information about the social and historical context of that specific calligraphy. These serve as factual synopses (see for example McNair 1998; Ledderose 1979;

2 Even an extensive mentioning of important works on calligraphy in the Chinese language would not do justice to the sheer volume of Chinese encyclopedia, commentaries, anthologies, reference works, volumes, magazines and articles written on calligraphy throughout the centuries. The largest and most complete collection of books covering the most important texts from the Zhou to the Qing dynasties is the “Complete Library in Four Sections” (sikuquanshu 四库全书) that includes the subcategory “Books on Art” (yishulei 艺术类) containing 71 books on painting and calligraphy. In this subcategory, theoretical discussions on the art of calligraphy, biographical information and aesthetic discussions on calligraphy can be found. For a contemporary complete overview of traditional calligraphic script types throughout history two works are most comprehensive and often used: “Collection of Chinese Calligraphy” (Zhongguo shufa quanji) (100 volumes) by Zhengcheng Liu 1991; and “Complete works of calligraphy” (Shodō zenshū). (26 volumes and 2 suppl. volumes) by Shimonaka 1973 [1954- 1968].

Sturman 1997; Schlombs 1998). In addition, there are many attempts to analyze the contemporary, or modern3, calligraphy movement in the early 1980s, when an ongoing discussion on the shape, meaning and importance of calligraphy commenced. These vivid debates sparked off the production of commentaries that mainly attempted to define the new phenomenon, and offer textual explanation on how to execute modern calligraphy, accompanied by graphic examples from the authors – most of them identifying as contemporary calligraphers themselves (for example G. Gu 1990; Z. Qiu 2005; D. Wang 2010; N. Wang 1994). Publications about the influences of western art in this calligraphy, and comparative studies further demonstrate a growing scholarly concern with contemporary calligraphy (see for example Hopfener 2014; Nakatani 2009; Leung and Kaplan 1999; Erickson 2001; Wiseman Bittner and Liu 2011; Cheng 2009; Chattopadhyay 2005; Silbergeld and Ching 2006). This dissertation owes a debt to these literatures, in their attempt to contextualize calligraphy historically. Moreover, I regard them as influential in demarcating the field of calligraphy by establishing basic theoretical premises and identifying central calligraphers both in the past and the present. Considerably less scholarship exists that recognizes and contextualizes a variety of calligraphic practices in its societal context today – a prevalent lack that this dissertation will address.

CALLIGRAPHY IN A SOCIAL CONTEXT

Two well-informed scholars reflect on calligraphy in connection to everyday life and its societal context: anthropologist Yuehping Yen (2004) and political scientist Richard Kraus (1991). I consider these authors my two main interlocutors in this field. Kraus understands calligraphy as “a little understood weapon in the arsenal of devices employed in China’s

3 I acknowledge the difference between “modern” and “contemporary”. In the context of calligraphy, Adriana Iezzi has laid out how according to Chinese scholarship, “modern” or xiandai 现代 is associated with “‘something opposite to tradition’: it is a cultural indicator of something that is changing in contemporary China” (2015, 208). “Contemporary” or dangdai 当代, on the other hand, as she quotes calligrapher Zhu Qingsheng, indicates the employment of classical forms that can be used in contemporary times (2015, 208). During my fieldwork, I found that the terms where used interchangeably, and therefore do not focus as much on the definition of terms. In my own analysis, I employ “contemporary calligraphy” to not exclude the possible employment of classical forms before analysis, and “modern” when this term is used by Chinese scholarship and interviewees.

18 political conflicts” (1991: 2). Treating calligraphy as a social and political institution, Kraus explores the ways in which calligraphy has been practiced, promoted and criticized by those in power. Kraus thus focuses predominantly on the writing done by the communist elite until the 1990s, while Yen contextualizes calligraphic practices through a focus on people from Kunming, scrutinizing handwriting; the role of the body in calligraphy discourse; popular beliefs and myths about calligraphy; and calligraphic landscapes. The reason that Yen and Kraus’ efforts to place Chinese calligraphy in context is not often repeated in the existing literature is explained by Yen as a “lack of anthropological interest”:

The association of writing and high arts, under both of which categories calligraphy is subsumed, is with the elite. Generally speaking, elite and dominant cultures are not what anthropologists are interested in traditionally. Having sworn loyalty to ‘popular culture’, anthropologists tend to shy away from the voices of the elite. As a firmly established subject in art history in both China and the West, calligraphy has been discussed and written about extensively. Unfortunately, this extensive body of literature on calligraphy alone is enough to render it unsuitable as an anthropological subject mainly because textual material is seen as the voice of the elite (2004:6).

Textual material on calligraphy as well as calligraphy as writing itself, as Yen argues, is seen as the voice of the elite – rendering it less attractive, or too daunting, to those wanting to flesh out the societal and quotidian significance of this cultural practice. She argues, however, that the “channeling effect between elite and popular cultures” (an argument made in the volume of Johnson, Nathan and Rawski, 1985) does allow for calligraphy to be taken up anthropologically:

Calligraphy can and should be investigated from multiple perspectives. These include how it is perceived by the non-elite and how the non-elite interact with and live in a tradition in which writing or calligraphy is a primary concern, as well as how it is seen by the elite, most directly manifested in the extensive collection of treatises on calligraphy, which should be viewed as enriching raw material (Yen 2004:7).

This dissertation follows Yen and Kraus in their attempts to contextualize calligraphic practices, but differentiates and adds to them in important ways. First, I argue that a binary distinction between the elite and popular is untenable in calligraphy discourse today. A quick characterization of “elite” in the context of contemporary cultural and artistic practice more generally in China is not straightforwardly made – the cultural consumption of the new economic elite, for example, differs from that of a cosmopolitan elite or a political elite. Yen, in 2004, locates the voice of “the elite” in the large body of literature on calligraphy, while using fieldwork data collected in Kunming to research “the people”. This dissertation, on the other hand, offers an empirical argument for both groups. As such, it is able to locate both voices of the elite and the non-elite within several distinguishing case studies. I see these voices as thoroughly intertwined, and therefore, none of the case studies are easily brought under the header of either “popular” or “elite” culture. Calligrapher Wang Dongling and contemporary artist Xu Bing, scrutinized in chapter three, for example, are clearly part of an educated artistic elite, and their costly contemporary works are consumed in museums and galleries. Moreover, these artists deliberately aim to stretch the confines of calligraphy, and could thus be critically approached as counter-hegemonic, were it not that, as I will show, they maintain a deliberate and faithful adherence to calligraphic principles. In another complicating twist, both artists seem to navigate effortlessly between art and popular commercial consumerism: Wang lends his brush to a campaign for the Apple company, and Xu Bing designs a type font that is for sale online, as I illustrate in chapter three and five respectively. In chapter two, older people write on the floors of public parks and can by all accounts be subsumed under the category of “the people”. Yet, here too, a binary distinction is not straightforward: their often skillfully executed characters reveal a comprehensive background in classic calligraphy education. The last two chapters deal with calligraphy consumed in the realm of new media, a field that again complicates the notion of the popular and the elite as it obfuscates the difference between producer and consumer, and is entangled with the commercial exploitation of connectivity (van Dijck 2013, 130). While all these types of calligraphies exist side by side, calligraphy has also, as per the argument that Kraus develops, only narrowly escaped classification as a feudal, petty bourgeois and aristocratic art form during the Maoist period, and is also still practiced fervently by the political elite.

In his “Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Popular’” (2010 [1981]), Stuart Hall discusses the meanings of “popular”, and criticizes two common understandings of this concept. The first meaning of popular is associated with consumerism and wide circulation, and subscribers to this definition link this to manipulative marketization of cultural products, degrading the authenticity of a work. Hall argues that this view renders consumers passive and all too readily manipulated. Moreover, he argues, “authentic” works do not exist. The second view sees popular as all the cultural activities for “the people”. This view, Hall maintains, is also problematic: not only is it untenable to keep a list of all activities – it would be endless–, but it also creates an essentialist idea of what, is for “the people”, and what is reserved for “the elite”. Hall then offers his own definition of popular that stresses its dynamic nature. It is an ongoing process, he argues, of constant struggle and tension between shifting cultural forms that gain, and then lose again, support from institutions (2010, 75–77). I follow his critique and definition of the popular in the context of calligraphy today. This dynamic process between cultural forms, rubbing against and mutually affecting each other, runs through the projects researched in this dissertation, signifying the complex negotiations of cultural practices that are necessarily informed by their past. Secondly, I take up practices, unlike Yen and Kraus, which in a varied range adhere to and respect calligraphic beliefs, yet simultaneously expand these, rebel against, poach on and reinterpret these notions. The calligraphies that I choose to scrutinize are not all written with ink and brush, and a variety of surfaces is used – from expensive rice paper to digital screens – through which both bodies and minds behave differently. I realize that this approach might seem unorthodox, but I include them for several reasons. The spaces in which calligraphy are consumed and practiced have expanded since the 1980s, and it is exactly these transformations that aptly show how calligraphy is increasingly entangled with technologies of the self, government and contemporary society. These practices, because they venture away from ink and brush, provide exceptional case studies for this dissertation: they are all located on different planes in terms of skill, accessibility and visuality, and as such allow me to ask questions specific to the medium. How does the calligrapher move, act, and how does s/he negotiate calligraphic rules? And how do the different visualities matter when it comes to constructing and practicing types of calligraphy?

The next section lays out a reading on the contextual and historical background of this art form, starting with the late Qing dynasty until the present, which will be beneficial to better contextualize calligraphic activities today.

CALLIGRAPHY IN MOTION

Down with the tradition of copying! Down with the art of the aristocratic minority! Down with the antisocial art that is divorced from the masses! Up with the creative art that represents the times! Up with art that can be shared with all of the people! Up with the people’s art that stands at the crossroads!4

This manifesto, presented by painter and art educator Lin Fengmian (1900–1991) at the first Beijing Art Meeting of 1927, serves as an apt illustration of the impassioned mind-sets of young intellectuals around the first two decades of the last century, in what was at that time the Republic of China, ruled by a nationalist government. Lin belonged to a group of art reformers who urged for a reinterpretation of Chinese art traditions, as well as the adoption and blending of western art techniques with traditional artistic practice. Earlier in the century, in the face of the Japanese intrusion, young intellectuals began to demand reform, culminating in the politically inclined May Fourth Movement (wusi yundong 五四运动) (1917-

1921). This demand for change included a nationwide popular attack on traditional Confucian ideas and the archaic writing system – the reformers were convinced that the strengthening of society could only occur if it restructured itself through western models such as liberalism, pragmatism, nationalism and anarchism. All this was part of the New Culture Movement (xin wenhua yundong 新⽂化运动), and was primarily directed at the educated youth.

Alongside these cultural and political activities, new encounters with western art forms – associated with science and progress because of their realism – convinced the modernizers that cultural reform would break grounds for social progress at large (Croizier

4 Statement by Lin Fengmian at The Great Beijing Art Meeting in 1927 (in Sullivan 1996, 44).

1993, 135; H. Guo 2010, 35). Reformers argued that in order to improve Chinese art, a western spirit of realism had to be adopted. A schism emerged subsequently, and the field of painting became discursively separated into “Chinese painting” and “western painting”

(guohua 国画 and xihua 西画)5. Hui Guo argues that this categorization was first and foremost a nationalistic project – a search for a national identity: “Almost all fields of artistic and literary production in late Qing and Republican China experienced an accelerated promotion of ‘Chineseness’ as national identity. In the art circles of early Republican China, competing narratives of Chinese traditional art engaged with each other in the name of the nation” (2010, 14). The arts and the rethinking of the purposes of art were invested in the project of constructing a history, as well as a future for Chinese art. It needed a way to be able to talk about art and aesthetics, and western concepts and language were used to do so. Within this ideologically hectic context, calligraphy as a pastime, a means to climb the bureaucratic ladder and a tool for self-cultivation of the elite, was understood to be no longer sufficient to fulfil the needs of a modern society. The introduction of western aesthetics had created a paradigm shift in the way Chinese intellectuals wrote about art, and western conceptions and categories of aesthetics based on Kantian ideas of beauty, such as “inspiration” and “aesthetic feeling” were employed, instigating reforms also of calligraphy criticism (X. Shi 2015). For an accurate historical overview of reforms within the calligraphy paradigm specifically, however, we need to go further back than the New Culture Movement: to the late seventeenth century, when a new chapter in the books of calligraphic evolution in dynastic China commenced. The conquest of China by the foreign Manchu’s in 1644 – until then ruled by the Chinese Ming dynasty – led calligraphers, who, facing these alien invaders, self-identified as ethnic Han, to seek out inscribed Han dynasty steles for copying. These distinctively engraved texts where previously excluded from aesthetic discourse and dismissed as merely a technical – and anonymous – skill. Now, they became fashionable: the proponents of this new fashion, grouped under “the Stele School” (beixue pai 碑学派), maintained that ancient script types on these steles or bronze vessels were superior because they were original, and not deteriorated by endless copying, as had been the norm for

5 On the semantic origins of guohua and zhongguohua and the adoption of Japanese modern concepts in the Chinese lexicon, see Guo 2010, 22-24.

23 centuries. The works produced by the followers of this new school were fresh, less refined, and recall the workings of a carving knife (Shi-yee Liu 2014; Ledderose 2001). This new turn impacted the renegotiation of the purposes and role of calligraphy, and informed ideas about copying and creativity within calligraphy discourse that would take shape in later centuries, facilitated notably by Kang Youwei (1858-1927) – the famous political reformer, calligrapher and nationalist whose ideas inspired the reformation movement. Kang Youwei published his influential commentary on the arts, “Expanding on Two Oars of the Ship of Art” (Guang yizhou shuangji 广艺⾈双楫), in 1891, which, according to Wang Yuli, stimulated discussions on “how to deal with the past in creating a viable ‘modern’ style in Chinese calligraphy” (Y. Wang 2017, 4; see also H. Guo 2010; X. Shi 2015). Kang Youwei argued that painstakingly copying one calligraphic style, or following one master is unpractical. Instead, he proposed a pragmatic and personal approach, when he argued:

Thus, I develop my own calligraphic style by drawing on those rubbings and my style has come about by itself. With skillfulness from practice and learning in other fields, one can become a calligrapher. Both gifted and ungifted people can succeed (in Y. Wang 2017, 7).

By the 1930s, scholarship on the aesthetic nature of calligraphy really started to thrive when scholars, having studied overseas, became interested in the topic. Their writings combined western aesthetic concepts with traditional calligraphy criticism. In 1931, the critic and poet Zhang Yinlin (1905-1942) wrote an influential treatise that would lay the foundation for the discipline of future calligraphy criticism (X. Shi 2015, 1). He began his treatise wondering whether or not calligraphy should be seen as an art form, and attempted to systematize the experience of beauty. Shi notes that while Zhang Yinlin wrote his preface, he was studying philosophy at Stanford, and his thoughts on beauty and art were thus naturally informed by western theory. Zhang arrived at the conclusion that calligraphy indeed is art, because its beauty induces positive feelings:

Works of Chinese calligraphy have structured perceptual forms, and in appreciating calligraphic works, we can always experience the positive feelings that are dominated by the internal laws of perceptual forms. Therefore, we can conclude that Chinese calligraphy is an art (Zhang Yinlin in X. Shi 2015, 11).

He further argued that calligraphy is thus equal to and should get as much attention as the other arts, and that there should be a systematic collection of the past achievements of calligraphy. This intellectual dialectic between western and Chinese arts, tradition and modernity, and the explorations on how their forms and meanings combined could create new theories of calligraphy was, however, never resolved. Brought to a halt by the invasion by Japan in 1937, the newly set up educational art institutes closed down, and momentum was lost. In the years that followed, as Michael Sullivan notes, art education was disrupted. Artists were mobilized to create propaganda and cartoons to serve the resistance against Japan, and many fled from the big cities or moved to the west (1996, 91–112). In 1942, after having established themselves in Yan’an after the Long March in 1935, the Communists proclaimed their political line on literature and arts at the speeches given by Mao Zedong at the Yan’an Forum on

Literature and Art (Yan’an wenyi zuotanhui 延安⽂艺座谈会). Outlining their strategies under the slogan “revolutionary art for the masses”, the principles demanded that all artistic activity from now on should serve the revolution: “What we demand is unity of politics and art, of content and form, and of the revolutionary political content and the highest possible degree of perfection in artistic form” (Mao 1967, 36). The style that was deemed most suitable for this purpose was so-called

“Revolutionary Realism” (geming xianshi zhuyi ⾰命现实主义), which combined Soviet-style

Socialist Realism and (re-) invented folk traditions, and this would remain the dominant style of art for the decades to come. Under the direction of Xu Beihong (1895-1953), a pioneer in Chinese art known for his monumental works in oil with Chinese themes in a western style, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing rejected modernist ideas of art, and focused solely on producing realist art that would be easily understood by the masses, and was able to be mass produced for propaganda purposes. This narrow definition of the arts as a tool for the revolution reached its peak during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when the permitted arts were limited to a very small selection of paintings, movies, novels and music (Kraus 1991). Throughout these shifts, however, calligraphy was not prohibited. While other traditional pursuits where heavily criticized as unwanted remnants of the feudal society that the Communist Revolution attempted to eliminate, calligraphy proved difficult to give up. This

25 was in part due to its dual function as both a traditional literati art and writing – for revolutionary propaganda to be successful, it had to be visually attractive, and calligraphy is the means pur sang to make Chinese characters appealing. At the same time, it was also thanks to Mao Zedong’s personal fondness for calligraphy that this particular traditional practice did not disappear with the other traditional arts. As a fervent calligraphy enthusiast, Mao Zedong had practiced calligraphy all his life, and did not stop writing during the communist take-over. To the contrary, his calligraphy practice intensified after 1949, seeking distraction from his bureaucratic burdens by picking up the brush (Kraus 1991, 66). He wrote classical pieces as well as his own poetry in an eccentric and clearly recognizable cursive grass script and built up a traditional calligraphy collection from the revenue of his sales (Kraus 1991, 72). In addition, as Yen notes, Mao’s calligraphic works where often found in people’s homes, on porcelain busts, mugs, vases and calendars, thus making the calligraphy of Mao Zedong and the other revolutionary leaders visible for everyone and thoroughly permeating the everyday lives of common people (2004, 3). Until today, this visibility of Mao Zedong’s handwritings persists, for example in the phrase “Serve the People” (wei renminfuwu 为⼈民

服务) that is seen often on public buildings, squares, newspapers and paraphernalia.

Figure I: Two soldiers posing in front of the Xinhua gate at Zhongnanhai, Beijing, with the phrase “Serve the People” (wei renmin fuwu 为⼈民服务) in Mao’s hand. Retrieved from botanwang.com For ordinary Chinese at that time, it was more complicated to write as freely as the revolutionary elite did. While calligraphy was not banned, it was restricted both in content, style and purpose. In 1931, a resolution on culture was passed by the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi

Soviet6, demanding that revolutionary slogans could be written, but they had to be written clearly, and grass script was to be avoided (Kraus 1991, 63). In 1957, Mao decided, however, to employ the writings of ordinary Chinese to the advantage of the Revolution. People were encouraged to write in the format of “big-character posters” (dazibao ⼤字報), large pieces of brush writing in a clear style, to vent their grievances about the political status quo. During this period known as the Hundred Flowers Movement (baihua qifang 百花齐放), people answered the call and everywhere in educational institutes, factories and public places, big- character posters appeared. Although this was not a new practice and had been used as an informal means to pass on information – from the mundane to the dissident– from the late 1930s during the Japanese war, this time, as Geremie Barmé argues, “new directions in mass propaganda created a format—and a calligraphic fluency—that could be utilized by people of all social strata for political expression, no matter how basic” (2012, 9; see also Leijonhufvud 1990). Mao Zedong maintained:

Dazibao are something wonderful. In my opinion, they should become part of our heritage... The more dazibao, the better ...Like language, dazibao are ‘classless’...They can be used by either the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. Because most of them are on the side of the proletariat, dazibao are instruments favorable to the proletariat and not the bourgeoisie (1957, in Sheng 1990, 238).

Mao Zedong ingeniously caught three birds with one stone with this directive: he urged China’s citizens to use their own writings as propaganda, while firmly maintaining power; freeing calligraphy from its feudal taint; and offering a sense of autonomy and artistic freedom to the people at a time when there was little of that otherwise. The success of the Hundred Flowers Movement had shocked the Party rulers, and after a temporary moratorium on the use of big-character posters by the public, the practice then culminated during the Cultural Revolution. At this paradoxical time, many old scrolls and calligraphic works were destroyed by the Red Guards, brigades of militant students formed in 1966 and guided by Mao Zedong, while at the same time, an unprecedented frenzied production of new writings

6 Established by Mao Zedong, the Hunan–Hubei–Jiangxi Soviet (Xiang egan suwei ai 湘鄂赣苏维埃) was a liberated zone in the 1930s, and a self-governing region under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control, commonly known as a Revolutionary Base Area.

27 took place. Hua Sheng notes that within a week after the call of the Party in 1966 for more dazibao, in Beijing alone “more than thirty times the normal monthly consumption of paper was being sold each month, just to meet the demand for dazibao writing (…) and people began using old newspapers as paper shortages developed and mud as a substitute for glue” (1990, 240). Jonathan Kaufman adds that in one manic week in 1966, “students at Peking University churned out 100,000 posters, enough to cover the Great Wall from end to end” (1980). People who were formerly enrolled in the art academies, or otherwise known for their capability of brush writing were at this point recruited to mass produce big-characters posters, while later, factory workers, children and peasants were also included in the practice, collectively covering the entire nation in a sea of characters (see Leijonhufvud 1990). I am elaborating on the practice of dazibao because the negotiations in the dazibao movement concerning the public and the private, propaganda and dissent, and art versus writing, were carried over to the new calligraphy movement in the 1980s. This influence can be seen both in the contents and style of their groundbreaking works, but also in the way calligraphy could now be imagined as a practice done by everybody, regardless of class and status. Moreover, many people who are given voice in this dissertation– ranging from artists, educators to water calligraphers – actually learned how to write calligraphy through writing dazibao, as educational institutes were mostly closed at that time. Contemporary calligrapher Wang Dongling confided that the dazibao movement led him to feel a sense of artistic freedom within calligraphy for the first time (Barrass 2002, 163), and Xu Bing mentioned that the way the revolution was played out in public writing urged him to renegotiate meanings of language, writing and tradition (Tsao and Ames 2011, 14). After the practice of dazibao was prohibited in 1979, and Deng Xiaoping’s Reform and Opening up policy in that same year caused an outburst of artistic and intellectual creativity, calligraphy organized itself in the Calligraphy Association in 1981, and new directions for the art form had, yet again, to be found. The questions asked by the great reformer and calligrapher Kang Youwei, quoted in the beginning of this section, became relevant again: how do we deal with the past in creating a viable and “modern” style of Chinese calligraphy? This was a question that could be asked again, because the Chinese script had survived attempts to be abolished altogether and be replaced by alphabetic writing. Before 1945, cultural leaders on the left, such as writer Lu Xun; writer, archeologist and communist leader

Guo Moruo; and educator and co-founder of the Communist Party Chen Duxiu, firmly believed that substituting the archaic and indeed elitist character script with alphabetic writing would speed up mass literacy and would be a step towards modernity. “It is, furthermore, the home of rotten and poisonous thought. I have no regret in abandoning it”, said Chen Duxiu (in Kraus 1991, 76). Different experiments in Romanization were undertaken in the 1920s7, and in 1950, Mao Zedong decided that characters first had to be simplified as an intermediate step to eventually phase out characters in exchange for alphabetic writing. The idea was, according to Shouhui Zhao, to maximize “the simplification of the graphic form until the components of Chinese characters became so simplified that the individual strokes themselves functioned as a phonetic alphabet, as has happened in Japanese” (2005, 333). This did not happen, but instead, in 1950, 1956, 1964 and again in 1977, lists of character reforms were published. These reforms were meant to reduce the number of strokes in one character, making it easier to write and to remember the characters. In 1958, the Romanizing system Hanyu Pinyin ( 汉语拼⾳) was introduced, first as an intermediate step towards complete Romanization but finally as a way to input characters in the computer, to write foreign names, and as an aid for the education of Mandarin. I started this contextual section at a critical period for the Chinese arts, when the tradition of writing calligraphy had been in full swing for thousands of years. My choice to do so is not based on the premise that in these preceding millennia, calligraphy was one homogenous art form, practiced more or less in the same manner throughout the centuries and therefore not worth commenting on. To the contrary: vast watershed moments, far- reaching renegotiations and crises have taken place in the realm of calligraphy throughout the many dynastic cycles. The developments in the last hundred years, however, as described above, created three important paradigm shifts that, I argue, should be seen as key points for a better understanding of calligraphy in the present. First, Zhang Yinlin and his reform-minded peers concluded that calligraphy induces positive feelings and is therefore an art form. Second, Kang Youwei attempted to redefine calligraphy as a practical art form that could be done by everyone – the skilled and unskilled alike, while elevating crude and idiosyncratic character forms. And finally, Mao Zedong’s promotion of big-character posters and his own public

7 Already before the twentieth century, missionaries created versions of romanized Chinese to make reading religious texts easier for Chinese. Other attempts were the Gwoyeu Romatzyh system developed in 1928, the Latinxua Sinwenz system developed in cooperation with Soviet sinologists, and finally Hanyu Pinyin in 1958.

29 writings made the calligraphic sign ubiquitous in the streetscape. All of the above is imperative for contextualizing calligraphy, but does not reveal much of what, then, calligraphy actually looks like. I therefore integrate a concentrated synopsis of the calligraphic past; explicating how the calligraphic sign has evolved from its beginnings, when writing was first carved into turtle shell and bone, and held over fire to read its cracks as part of divination rituals. Teleological overviews such as these, which attempt to create a coherent narrative of a vast and complex system spanning thousands of years are however by definition problematic. Imre Galambos argues that:

“To be sure, a historical development itself is a conceptual notion that only makes sense in retrospect, while the actual changes and developments that happen in real life, whether in the past or the present, are significantly more complex and often appear to be random. The orthographic diversity evidenced in medieval manuscripts reminds us of the complex paths of the development of the Chinese script” (2014, 70).

And indeed, the following overview leaves out discontinuities, errors and parallel existing systems, effectively producing merely the dominant narrative of the historical development of calligraphy. I maintain, however, that such an overview still has value. As I study calligraphy as a lived practice in the contemporary, I learned how this narrative is an integral part of the way the idea of calligraphy is conceptualized. This is the leading story that children grow up with and hear about in their calligraphy classes, and this is the narrative that is reproduced in lesson materials on Chinese writing. Calligraphy educators frame their lessons around the timeline presented in this account, and it features tenaciously in the widespread idea of the supremacy of Chinese culture, shaped around China’s long and continuously united 5000 years of cultural history. This history starts often with the most emblematic of human culture: writing. The factuality of this narrative is therefore less important than what it does to the behaviors, imaginations and invented memories regarding calligraphy today as well as in the past, and it is therefore, in abbreviated form, included in this dissertation.

THE VISUAL SIGN

The Chinese word for “culture” is made up of the characters wen ⽂ and hua 化 (wen ⽂ being the carrier of meaning: writing, literature, culture; while hua 化 means transformation, or “to make into”, and is often placed after a noun to make a verb). The earliest meaning of wen ⽂ is visible in the character itself, which is made up of a diagonal crossing of two strokes. Xu

Shen, the compiler of the first Chinese dictionary (Shuowen jiezi 说⽂解字), explains around

100 CE: “Wen is the crisscrossing of strokes; it imitates intersected patterns” (1963, 185). Patterning refers to the ordering of things that are naturally occurring in nature; the idea of the human patterning or ordering of nature is derived from there, and wen came to mean that which is opposite to naturalness: human culture (Gu 2016, 155, Gawlikowski 1989; Zito and Barlow 1994). Human patterning – or ordering–, writing and culture, are thus semantically linked in the Chinese language, and the origins and composition of the word wenhua indicate that writing is, semantically, at the very core of culture. Barend Noordam further extrapolates that “the link with writings and literacy can proceed from both angles: written characters constitute a design in themselves, and written sources (especially the ones later recognized as classics) were a repository of the proper human cultural forms and thus civility” (2018, 155). The earliest forms of recognizable Chinese writing, i.e., culture making, are found in the so-called oracle bone inscriptions (jiaguwen 甲骨⽂). These inscriptions were carved on the scapulae of oxen and turtle shells and date back to the late Shang dynasty (1200-1045 BCE). The inscriptions were meant for divination, and reveal that by that time, a system of writing was already fully developed (Boltz 1994, 33). From the beginning, the script has been morphemic, which means that every sign stands for one morpheme, and has been basically pictographic, although this has been disputed by for example William Boltz, who argues that “hardly a single character can actually be regarded as pictographic. If by ‘pictographic’ we mean a graph that depicts a thing realistically enough for us to identify it without knowing what word the graph stands for” (1994, 31). Jerry Norman adds that with time, the truly representational images progressively simplified and stylized, because they are more time- consuming to depict (1988, 59). More abstract representations were added such as semantic

31 indicators and phonetic compounding, in which elements were added not for their meaning, but for their sound. This very early writing proved fascinating in both China and the west, and the first pictographic beginnings of the script led to the incorrect but very pervasive idea that Chinese writing is “ideographic”8: a word that symbolizes the idea of a thing without indicating the sequence of sounds in its name. In other words, such a writing can convey an idea directly to the mind without interference of a sound or language. This, of course, is a tantalizing idea, and held sway first among early western missionaries in China, as it, according to John DeFrancis: “took hold as part of the chinoiserie fad among western intellectuals that was stimulated by the generally highly laudatory writings of Catholic missionaries from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries” (1986, 133). The myth has been replicated by Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa who saw the Chinese poem as a series of concrete visual images, and even by Jacques Derrida, who built his entire critique of logocentrism on it: “we thus have the testimony of a powerful movement of civilization developing outside of all logocentrism”, he argued about Chinese civilization (1998, 90). Derrida has been thoroughly critiqued for basing his argument on a false, and stereotyping, notion, but Rey Chow argues that it is enabling as well:

Whereas stereotypes are usually regarded pejoratively, as a form of entrapment and victimization of the other, the case of Derrida shows that stereotypes can be enabling: without the cliché of Chinese as an ideographic language, as a writing made up of silent little pictures, the radical epistemic rupture known as deconstruction could perhaps not have come into being in the manner it did (2002, 63).

Around the Zhou dynasty (1046-771 BCE) and the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BCE), inscriptions on bronze vessels started to appear (jinwen ⾦⽂), in style and structure similar to the writings of the late Shang dynasty. Norman notes that gradually, the lines became simpler, and rounded shapes became increasingly angular. Around the time of the Warring States (475-222 BCE), as a consequence of political fragmentation, diversity among the scripts written by the peoples of different states grew. Then, in the Qin dynasty (221 BCE-206 BCE),

8 In Chinese, instead of ideographic (biaoyi wenzi 表意⽂字) the word pictographic (xiangxing wenzi 象形⽂字) is used more often.

32 emperor Qin Shi Huang embarked on a wide-ranging standardizing policy that aimed to homogenize various measurements including the script. The Qin script became mandatory throughout the empire, and is “ancestral to all later forms of writing”, according to Norman (1988, 63). The script existed in two different forms, a complex standard form, called “seal script” (zhuanshu 篆书), because of its use on seals, and “clerical script” (lishu ⾪书), due to its association with government clerks. Moving on to the Western-Han dynasty (206 BCE-24 CE), a Han-variety of the clerical script took shape, and by the end of the Eastern-Han-dynasty (25-

220 CE), the “standard script” (kaishu 楷书), which is still in use today, replaced the clerical script: a clear, less ornate script, defined by sharp angles and straight lines. Already as early

Figure II: Varieties of the Chinese script. From left to right: oracle bone script, bronze script, small seal script, clerical script, regular script, running script and grass script

as the 3th century BCE, cursive forms of different script types existed, and by the end of the

Han dynasty, the use of the cursive “grass script” (caoshu 草书) accelerated. In this expressive script type, the strokes in one character are reduced to single or several meandering lines and there is a great variety in thickness and thinness of the strokes, which can be combined, omitted or repositioned. “Running script” (xingshu ⾏书) is also derivative of standard script, and developed together with caoshu. Xingshu too is characterized by a more flowing style, but remains closer to the model of kaishu. By the time of the Tang-dynasty (617-907 CE), both xingshu and caoshu had become the two predominant ways of writing characters (Norman 1988, 58–70).

We are, by means of this overview, thus presented with a neatly fitting and rather awe-inspiring narrative, as seen in figure II, which takes us from bone-carvings to expressive grass script, affirming the long and continuous intellectual history of China through script. This powerful narrative is widely accepted, and also serves practical usages: a hobbyist calligrapher can, for example, decide that he is in the mood for writing seal script today, grab his smartphone and open the category “seal script” on his calligraphy-app that will present him with a list of model writings. The changes in the visuality of the calligraphic sign took place, naturally, in tandem with the inventions of new methods of writing and preserving. Paper came into general use around the end of the Han dynasty, which further encouraged the development of calligraphy. The practical use of calligraphy has always been rooted in everyday practice, alongside with being an art form: inscriptions were to be read – either by divine powers or humans – on an object on which the text was inscribed (Nylan 1999,19). Writing further served mundane purposes: it was a tool to write down history, but also to write personal letters, complaints, poetry and songs. By the time of the Eastern Han, forms of calligraphy also started to be referred to as “art” and were valued as such in textual discourse (Hertel 2017, 38). This matured during the early Six Dynasty period (222-589 CE), when a “culture” of calligraphy took shape, including the emergence of a critical discourse on calligraphy and a flourishing art market in which calligraphy was sold as a valuable commodity (Harrist 2001, 180). The four tools needed to make calligraphy also acquired greater significance, and around this time, these tools started to be called the “Four Treasures of the Study” (Wen fang si bao ⽂房四宝) : the ink brush, inkstick, paper and inkstone. During that period – specifically, during the Eastern-Jin Dynasty (317-420 CE) – lived Wang Xizhi (303-361 CE). Wang Xizhi should be included in this overview, as he is remembered in the collective national memory as the “sage of calligraphy” – the adulation of calligraphy started with him. Wang wrote the most revered, canonical, the best-known and because of all these reasons, the most often copied piece of calligraphy in China: The Preface of the

Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion (Lanting ji xu 兰亭集序, hereafter the Orchid Pavilion). The

Orchid Pavilion is supposedly a commemoration of a party hosted by Wang Xizhi on a festive spring evening in the year 353 CE, when his forty-one guests drank wine, composed poetry and generally enjoyed themselves. At the end of the evening, Wang Xizhi, inebriated,

34 collected all the poems that were made and in a jolt of creative genius, wrote a commemoration of the party that would turn out to become an immortal piece of calligraphy. The work comments on temporal feelings of that moment: the gathering, the weather, on the joy he feels of being alive and having a good time with his friends, and the sadness of death. Tang calligrapher Sun Guoting (648-703) comments in his Treaty of Calligraphy: “In his Preface to the Orchid Pavilion his spirits were high and his thoughts were exceptional” (in Murck and Fong 1991, 12), and Robert Harrist comments on the work: “It was a shining embodiment of one of the highest ideals of the art of calligraphy– the attainment of spontaneous untrammeled creativity” (2001, 176).9 Following the reign of Emperor Taizong, the style of Wang Xizhi and his equally gifted son, Wang Xianzhi (344-386) further gained popularity, and their style has since then dominated the canon of calligraphy. The “School of the two Wangs”, or “Two Wang Style” (erwang ⼆王 ; the calligraphic style of Wang Xizhi and his son Wang

Xianzhi) to this day continues to be among the standards to copy from for any learner of calligraphy.10

CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY FROM A CULTURAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVE

From what I have laid out until this point, the historical and national significance of calligraphy should be abundantly clear. This dissertation attempts, now, to carefully pry this large and valued field apart, to then scrutinize the dismantled pieces separately. Which pieces – elements of practice or ideas – are embodied, most valued, and which ones have been discarded in the present? Which elements are creative, and is that a useful category to discuss for an art form rooted in copying models? Which pieces are fixed within the realm of “high art”, and which ones are being renegotiated in the realm of “everyday life”? To be able to do

9 Wang Xizhi too regarded this piece the best work of calligraphy he had ever written. Already in Wang’s lifetime, scribes, officials and students began to copy his work, a practice that continues all the way from the Eastern Jin through the Six Dynasties periods, and then reaching its peak during the reign of Emperor Taizong (r. 627-649) of the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE). Emperor Taizong deeply admired the work of Wang Xizhi, and subsidized the production of numerous copies of his pieces. Upon seeing a copy of The Orchid Pavilion, Emperor Taizong decided he had to have the original, and he summoned search parties to find the authentic piece. Hunting for it all over the country, the manuscript was finally stolen from Buddhist monk Biancai, and came into the possession of the Emperor. The Emperor then treasured it to the extent that when he died, he had it buried with him in his tomb, leaving the original forever lost. (Harrist 2001, 183; Yen 2004, 133). 10 After the Tang dynasty, court calligraphers consciously took on other models as well, often to take a deliberate stance against the ruling elite of the previous dynasty.

35 this, I believe that a transparent engagement with theoretical tools from different disciplines is necessary. This dissertation is grounded in Cultural Studies, but borrows from Area Studies and employs ethnographical methods. The benefit of such a heterogeneous grounding lies in the hope of creating a cross-fertilization of disciplines (Y. F. Chow and de Kloet 2014). This study contributes to Cultural Studies in two specific ways. The main project of Cultural Studies from its inception was to take “popular” culture seriously, and to approach it as a site of struggle over power, resistance and over individuality and hegemony. It is, as Ien Ang argues, therefore also a political project: it is sentimentally invested in the marginalized and the subaltern, and its interests are politically motivated – by deconstructing relations of power, works within the range of Cultural Studies hope to contribute to progressive politics (Ang 2006, 183-84). Its pitfalls stem from the same aspiration. Meaghan Morris argues that this project has led to a tendency to take any popular object or practice, and theorize it to the extent that it becomes active, resistant and creative. It does not matter which topic is taken, according to Morris, because the arguments remain the same: “I get a feeling that somewhere in some English publisher’s vault there is a master disk from which thousands of versions of the same article about pleasure, resistance, and the politics of consumption are being run off under different names with minor variations” (1990, 21). Chinese calligraphy is not often approached as part of “popular” culture, and doing so would already imply, from the perspective of Morris’ abovementioned critique, that its current popularity or everydayness renders it being somehow counter-hegemonic; more active; more resistant to structures of power; and more creative. This study rejects this implication, and argues instead that by researching calligraphy today, there is strength in approaching new and popular forms of calligraphy – which in various degrees could indeed be seen as marginalized, obscure or resistant – as deeply informed by their former – and ongoing – status of (a Chinese) high art. Contemporary practices of calligraphy thus offer the speaking position of an elite art form that is now, by all means, popular, and influences technologies of the self, government and contemporary society. It is produced, enacted and consumed widely in different realms of popular culture while it maintains a complicated relationship with both creativity and political power. By acknowledging these complexities, and by taking equally seriously the dominant and traditional form of calligraphy as well as its derivatives in various domains of everyday life, this study brings new perspectives to the field of Cultural Studies.

Second, while Chinese calligraphy is not often approached as part of “popular” culture, it is equally as rarely approached without a dominant focus on the “Chinesenesss” of the practice, making the subject almost exclusively reserved for scrutiny by Area Studies scholars. This dissertation, on the other hand, does not only contest the dominant focus on popular culture within the domain of Cultural Studies, but it also challenges one of its more well- known pitfalls: Eurocentrism. Ackbar Abbas and John Erni (2004) note that: “A certain parochialism continues to operate in Cultural Studies as a whole, whose objects of and languages for analysis have had the effect of closing off real contact with scholarship conducted outside its (western) radar screen” (2004, 2). Efforts to “internationalize”, or to deconstruct the narrative of Cultural Studies as a North-Atlantic endeavor have been made, by, for instance, the journal and network Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, an initiative further driven by the conviction that the idea of Asia as a region should be problematized (Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 2000, 5-6). This is where the influence of Area Studies comes in. My former classmates from Area Studies have on more than one occasion sighed with envy when hearing about my research, that seemed to them a cheerful bricolage of all things Chinese calligraphy seen through different disciplines, and at the same time I found them sneering at my use of theory: do you, really, need Foucault to explain calligraphy? This is precisely the point. Rey Chow argues:

Against the rigidity of the norm of Chinese studies, then, a considerable range of discourses that are not Chinese by tradition, language, or discipline is making a substantial impact on the study of Chinese literature and culture. With the invasion of these foreign elements, how can the legitimating disciplinary boundary of Chinese versus non-Chinese be maintained? (1998, 17)

I take from Chow’s argument that disciplinary boundaries of Chinese versus non-Chinese are no longer tenable – and have never been – and I apply this to both my use of theory as well as to my subject. Theory and analytical tools applied in the west can and should be applied to cultural practices elsewhere, and, importantly: vice versa as well. In the global production and circulation of knowledge however, a clear bias still exists towards western theory. On the other hand, it is equally problematic to retreat to a localist approach, taking the position of insiderism and methodological nationalism (Dirlik 2010, 15). The challenge, one that this

37 study is keen to take on, is to search for both similarities and contradictions through a careful empirical analysis of lived practices of Chinese calligraphy. This study also adds to Area Studies. Area Studies has over the years also received its fair amount of critique. It has been associated with many mutually reinforcing problems such as essentialism, Eurocentrism, Orientalism, and is targeted for not keeping up with global transformations, while dwindling student interest further induce problems of funding (King 2005, 2 in Chua et al. 2019, 31). It has, according to Chua et al. “been on life support for a generation” (2019, 31). Here, I do not reiterate these critiques, notwithstanding their legitimacy. Instead, I am inspired by Arif Dirlik (2010) to point at some beneficial features of Area Studies, specifically for this study. Dirlik argues that the teaching of languages has long been the focal point of Area Studies:

Few would dispute the contribution of language skills to an improved understanding of the world, and one wonders what withdrawal of support for area studies might mean for that particular activity. For all the problems of interpretation involved, moreover, area studies have been based on the premise of intensive reading of texts, textual traditions, and histories. It is easy to lose sight of the significance of this task when attention shifts from reading to interpretation. Whatever the deficiencies of readings distorted by unequal relations of power, there is also a price to be paid, as we seem to be paying these days, for not reading at all. (2010, 8)

It is important to not overlook this significant feature. This study has benefitted greatly from the sensibilities of Area studies. Not only has being able to speak the local language made collecting empirical data go more smoothly – not because of an extraordinary fluency on my part, but also because of the goodwill that speaking a language often generates – insights from Area Studies with regards to understanding the importance of textual traditions in China have been significant to grasping how these traditions and histories were, and still are, important to the everyday lives of people involved in calligraphy today. With the sensibility of Area Studies applied to this spatial and cultural context, this thesis adds new understandings on cultural production in China. Helped by the openness in the use of theory so distinctive of Cultural Studies, this study provides insights on contemporary practices of calligraphy through various theoretical lenses, and it complements

38 studies on Chinese arts by providing contemporary empirical fieldwork data. In the following chapters, I will continue to use a varied array of theoretical tools to flesh meaning out of my case studies. I do this deliberately, as I agree with Michel Foucault that theory should be approached as a toolbox:

I would like my books to be a kind of tool-box which others can rummage through to find a tool, which they can use however they wish in their own area... I would like the little volume that I want to write on disciplinary systems to be useful to an educator, a warden, a magistrate, a conscientious objector. I don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers (1974, 523).

This is what the combination of Cultural Studies and Area Studies have done for this study on Chinese calligraphy: it allows for theoretical and methodological eclecticism and openness, and is thus able to pull different practices together and take them all, and equally seriously, as such facilitating a broader understanding about different types of calligraphy existing in the present without falling in the trap to approach calligraphy merely as a quintessential Chinese form of art.

CREATIVITY IN THE EVERYDAY

Many of the practices under scrutiny take place in the domain of “the everyday”. One would be hard-pressed to find a more ambivalent concept than “the everyday”: it signifies on the one hand all the daily activities, things, rituals and routine actions that make up our day-today life, passing by almost unnoticeably. On the other hand, it is precisely this unnoticeable quality, the being so close to us, that gives it the possibility of inducing the most pleasure, of being the most exciting, and making it the space were new ideas, sensibilities and thoughts can grow. Efforts to understand this concept and flesh out its manifold meanings since the late 19th Century include ideas to see “the everyday” a space for more authentic living (Lefebvre, 1974), as a counter-concept to the dominant rationale (de Certeau, 1984), as a critique on a heroic performance-centred existence (Gouldner 1975), and as a domain where rationalization can be resisted (Maffesoli 1989). This eclectic theorization has led Mike Featherstone to argue that “the everyday” as a concept “appears to be a residual category

39 into which can be jettisoned all the irritating bits and pieces which do not fit into orderly thought” (1995, 55). While this suggests that the happenings within everyday life do not fall neatly into rational categories (and that there might be an overemphasizing of orderly thought within critical thinking), Ben Highmore (2002, 19) proposes a working definition that I want to follow here as well, in defense of my categorizations of calligraphy based on encounters in everyday life: he argues that the concept of everyday life has much in common with the incipient meaning of aesthetics. Aesthetics, according to Highmore (2002, 19), can be seen as an attempt to explain the sensory and corporeal in a structural way, and he goes on to quote Alexander Baumgarten who argues that “Science is not to be dragged down to the region of sensibility, but the sensible is to be lifted to the dignity of knowledge” ( quoted in Highmore 2002, 19). In a similar vein, I aim to lift the everydayness of calligraphic practice into this “dignity of knowledge”, and capture what is done there, how it impacts everyday lives, and how these happenings are linked. Highmore argues: “If everyday life, for the most part, goes by unnoticed (even as it is being revolutionized), then the first task for attending to it will be to make it noticeable” (2002, 23) – this idea lies at the core of this dissertation: making the living, sensory, boring, and exciting everyday practices of calligraphy visible. Many of my theorizations on the everyday, most of them outlined in chapter two, are linked to yet another, highly elusive notion that runs through this dissertation: creativity. Earlier in this introduction, I suggested that, following Morris (1990, 21), we should not make the mistake of arguing that practices of calligraphy are now becoming more creative just because they are increasing in popularity and are happening in everyday contexts. Maintaining that calligraphy is increasingly creative presupposes that (1) calligraphy was not creative before, and (2) “creativity” is a straightforwardly definable concept. I reject both ideas. Calligraphy is often juxtaposed with claims of creativity, serving as the prime example of the all-familiar trope of the Chinese tradition of copying as opposed to a creative tradition in the west. In the west, originality or creativity is often linked to individuality, and Winnie Wong notes how China’s artistic production based on imitative reproduction is conjured as a forceful contradiction to the western idea of the individual genius: “ If the Mona Lisa is made to represent the culmination of a particular myth of western European individuality rooted in the figure of the artist and his invention, then the faceless and monochrome appearance of Chinese literati painting has mutually served as its radical opposite” (2010, 45). Wong argues

40 further how scholarship on Chinese art has convincingly attempted to undo these stereotypes, but the belief that there exists an essential unbridgeable difference between Chinese and western originality still persists. A broader understanding of contemporary practices of calligraphy might help in further breaking down these alleged dichotomies. Calligraphy means by and large: modelling characters after preexisting configurations that have been transmitted from calligrapher to calligrapher over a long span of time. As Harrist phrases it, there is a basic “graphic DNA” of a character (2001, 178), on which all future arrangements are necessarily founded: they will always be reproductions. Yet, the ultimate copy, a well-executed piece of calligraphy, reveals the personality of the calligrapher. Ideally, the calligrapher will enter the “spirit” of the original (rushen入神).In this mental state of trying to get as close to the spirit of a work as possible – spirit (shen 神) can be manifested in both animate and inanimate things– the calligrapher is both guided and creatively inspired by the previous work. This inspiriation derives not from nature or a divine being, but arises out of the preceding calligraphy. In the process, this new calligrapher has added his own spirit to the work, his personal brushstrokes and his embodied act of writing. This calligrapher is now, too, part of the culture of calligraphy. This view is aptly explained by interviewee Tao, a calligraphy teacher in Beijing. He explains how the term “creativity” (chuangyi 创意) is not very relevant in calligraphy discourse, and instead “creative work”, or “creation” (chuangzuo 创作) is employed, with the latter morpheme meaning “to make, work, compose, write, act or perform”:

Ah, you mean creative work (chuangzuo 创作) and creativity (chuangyi 创意), right? I do

not really understand this concept of ‘creativity’, I always thought that it was one of these imported foreign concepts. Because in traditional Chinese language, we do not talk about creativity, so it must come from a western cultural category. They emphasize ‘ideas’ much more. This is my opinion, and I have a very easy point of view. Let’s first talk about

creativity (chuangyi 创意). If I want to do creativity (zuo yige chuangyi 做⼀个创意), a

creative work, it does not surpass similar things that were made before that much, only a little bit, that is the ’idea‘. Then, creativity is established. But creative work (chuangzuo

创作) is different. The creative work in calligraphy is placed in the coordinates of

horizontal and vertical lines, and there we judge if the creative work is valuable. So, what about the horizontal and the vertical, well, the horizontal is the present, in which I am now writing these lines. I am doing creative work in the present. Is that not adding new research significance? Is that not something new to reflect on? On the vertical coordinates we place the ancient sages and the classics that they left behind to compare. I have taken another step forward from the context of such a continuous inheritance. In fact, I think that in the field of Chinese calligraphy and Chinese painting, creation is far more difficult than creativity. (Interview 26)

The pure act of writing in the present, in his account, is in itself already creative because it adds a layer on top of the already rich history of calligraphy. What Tao also says, and this connects the everyday to creativity, is that the mere act of creating a work in the present, renders it creative. Yet, that this is a difficult state to achieve, and that personal creation can fail in this view, is also mentioned by informant Zhang:

I once met someone, in his 60s, who wrote the Orchid Pavilion of Wang Xizhi. He was able to write the Orchid Pavilion, he deeply understood it. But then I asked him to bring something he created himself, and the two things were far apart. Why? Because he is a craftsman. He did not understand himself, he had no self-knowledge, so his work was not good. Therefore, it is a very difficult journey to get out of and to start creating. It takes a long time of practicing, and only gradually one can develop one’s own characteristics and

one’s own style. This is called creation ( chuangzuo 创作). ( Interview 4)

The tension between copying on the one hand and creativity on the other as if they are two opposites, has, according to Eitan Wilf become increasingly laden with moral overtones “because it reverberates with the question of the relationship between personal autonomy and tradition” (2012, 32). Wilf argues that creativity has come to be associated with “modernity”, while imitation bears connotations with tradition and the inauthentic, and is altogether seen as binary to the modern imaginary. China is not immune to the fact that creativity is now globally seen as a marker of modernity, and is increasingly implanting the idea of creativity as a means to push China forward in a global production market where creative, aspirational and enterprising individuals take the lead.

Various claims of creativity will be developed in this dissertation. They are, as we shall see, contingent upon the meanings ascribed to them by the various aesthetic communities under scrutiny. In the following chapters, I engage with different groups that each have developed a different relationship to the concept of creativity in relation to calligraphy and copying, which are also entangled. Where educators in chapter one, for example, speak of creation (创作 chuangzuo), they do so in the context of a political discourse that ascribes to creative, or creating individuals, the power to instigate nation building. In the last chapter, the discourse of creativity takes on Marxist-like features: creative individuals are seen as central in the development of China’s economy towards a creative producer. Yet, in that case- study, creativity, rather than being equated with modernity, is dug out from the Chinese past. At the same time, as I illustrate in the third chapter, a discourse around creativity is developed not as a skill to cultivate, but as a mindset that can, and should, be inserted in the practice of calligraphy to maintain its relevance. Creativity is thus regarded as a skill, a tool of power, a form of knowledge and a quality of the mind. These intertwining discourses, with the various expectations of what creativity affords within, will therefore be discussed separately in each chapter.

METHODOLOGY

While I was preparing for this study, contemporary practices of calligraphy seemed to be rather a niche subject to study. I had considered how different types of calligraphy could each provide me with insights in how calligraphy is lived and experienced in Beijing today, how it is employed as a disciplining tool, would allow for creative bodies to fulfil a certain potential, and finally, how all of this might tell me something about creativity and calligraphy in China today. Having arrived in Beijing for fieldwork, any sense of “niche” disappeared quickly. I soon learned that not only is calligraphy everywhere – which made distinguishing fields more complex than I had initially thought – but moreover that those professionally involved in calligraphy are often passionately involved. My approach, balancing between Cultural Studies, Area Studies, employing anthropological and ethnographical approaches, at first did not help in acquiring the cultural capital needed to get access as fast as I wanted. As I tried to become part of an inner circle, I learned to talk the calligraphic jargon by studying calligraphy styles and masters and by immersing myself in all the activities related to calligraphy that I could

43 find. I also took calligraphy lessons – first from a private teacher in the Netherlands, then at a commercial calligraphy school in Beijing and finally I joined a hobby club organized by students of Peking University. I found out that being able to write a beautiful hengbi (横笔 – a lying down brush stroke) before starting the interview, or being able to recognize the styles and specifics of the old calligraphy masters in other people’s works, helped to be taken seriously in this complex cultural scene. With the help of connections (guanxi 关系), I finally met many people who were willing to tag me along to their writing clubs, calligraphy schools, lectures, exhibitions and calligraphy-loving friends and parents. This dissertation draws on data collected during two fieldwork periods spanning a total of 11 months. The first period of data collection took place from September 2015 to June 2016 (nine months). The second part of the fieldwork was conducted in April and May 2018 (two months). For the largest part, these fieldwork trips took place in Beijing, currently inhabited by close to 22 million people. Trips to Hangzhou and Linyi were made both to interview relevant artists, calligraphy students, and also to get a flavor of how a calligraphy culture might be enacted and perceived of outside the capital. Beijing is regarded as the center of calligraphic power and culture. It is tremendously rich in cultural and calligraphic spaces: amongst them are small calligraphy schools; universities offering BA, MA and PhD tracks in Calligraphy Studies; there are hobby clubs and water calligraphers; children’s contests; plays and exhibitions; shops with calligraphic banners made by famous artists; calligraphy museums exhibiting modern and traditional calligraphy; and experimental art spaces showing avant-garde artworks that walk the blurry lines between modern calligraphy and experimental art. For a study on calligraphic practices, this means that there is a wealth of calligraphy related activity to research – provided that you are allowed access. During my fieldwork, such a condensed cultural space has allowed me as a researcher to hop on a Mobike in the morning – the (then) popular bike sharing system – to interview the manager of small calligraphy school, visit the Dongyue temple to see the extant stone stele of Yuan Dynasty calligrapher Zhao Mengfu in the afternoon, to end with a stroll around the hip art district of Caochangdi, looking around for contemporary art that might feature calligraphic strokes and lines, while in-between, on the metro, I would check the talk of the day on the calligraphy WeChat groups and arrange interviews via WeChat. This approach – focusing almost solely on one city apart from a stint in Hangzhou for interviews and two

44 school visits – has resulted in a Beijing-centeredness that remains visible in most of my case studies. The people who speak throughout this dissertation and inhabit the calligraphic spaces of Beijing however, are rarely born in Beijing– they have moved from other provinces either for work or study and as many people do in China, they still refer to themselves as from the province where their laojia 老家, their ancestral home, is located. A part of my research took place on – inevitably anno 2018 – WeChat. WeChat is a social media product by internet- based technology and cultural enterprise Tencent, and entered the market in 2011. Since then, it has grown fast, with an estimated one billion monthly active users in 2019 and has become an integral part of the daily lives of many Chinese people, offering a range of services from private instant messaging, gaming, public accounts, and professional services such as paying per phone, buying train tickets and ordering taxis. WeChat is the most popular medium among the Chinese social media services, and attracts 75.9 percent of the total internet users (W. Chen, Bong, and Li 2017, 144-146). WeChat groups are used to communicate with circles of friends, colleagues, or with people sharing the same interests, and these networks are considered more tightknit than those on larger and more public online platforms such as Weibo (Kent, Ellis, and Xu 2017). It was thus inevitable to employ WeChat for my ethnographic fieldwork, as Garcia et al. (2009) in their work on online ethnography rightfully note: “virtually all ethnographies of contemporary society should include technologically mediated communication, behavior, or artefacts in their definition of the field or setting of the research” (2009, 57). I have closely followed four WeChat groups, of around 400 people each, who were based all over China. Their interest in calligraphy bound them, and their calligraphies, but also articles, topics and thoughts they shared, have greatly influenced the direction of my considerations and ideas It also shows how WeChat has allowed for the calligraphy sphere to become increasingly mobile, and how mediated experiences of calligraphy are as much part of the scene as those experienced live. Showing off calligraphy, connecting with shuyou (书友, calligraphy friends) to discuss recent developments, exhibitions, and news on new governmental directives on calligraphy, now take place on digital platforms. This led me to ask some of the more active participants in these groups living outside of Beijing to be interviewed through a WeChat questionnaire, which resulted in fourteen short online interviews. The fact that while Beijing, as the capital, might have a more developed “high art”

45 calligraphic scene, is not a reason to not study its particularities, especially on the understanding of everyday creative practices of calligraphy. It is, however, important to realize that Beijing is not representative of the People’s Republic of China as a whole, and that practices of calligraphy in Beijing are not, or, following Yen, might even be less representative for other parts of China. Feeling more secure as a culturally homogenous group, she argues, Beijingers might be more willing to diverge from established traditions, allowing for a more experimental and avant-garde approach to calligraphy (2004, 6). I thus consciously shy away from any idea of representativeness, and do not claim to provide an account of calligraphic practices in China. This scene is too vast, too diverse and as a whole, beyond the scope of this study. Instead of claiming to narrate an objective and representative account about a factual world of calligraphy “out there”, I argue throughout that the practices, views and opinions are always located, embodied and contingent. I will thus provide an insight in the calligraphic scene, showing how the people I met in Beijing as well as online integrate their calligraphic activity in their everyday lives, how calligraphy is taught, learned, experienced and enjoyed, creatively or less-creatively executed and finally, how calligraphy is employed in numerous ways as a dual tactic for self-realization, and nation building. The fieldwork in Beijing was indispensable to contextualize calligraphy as a living cultural scene. It has brought me to places I would never have heard of otherwise, and introduced me to practices and ideas that I did not know existed or knew to what extent they were important. It was also essential to sense and feel these different calligraphy scenes. Walmsley argues that “instead of striving to understand and rationalize the value of the arts, we should instead aim to feel and experience it” (Walmsley 2018, 272). Although not unproblematic in terms of critical proximity or distance, I too argue that the physical closeness to my research object has helped me significantly to understand calligraphy better. Seeing calligraphers and their brushes move, smelling the ink in the calligraphy studios, observing how teachers speak to their students and how students talk amongst each other, how water calligraphers spend their mornings with their homemade brushes and buckets of water, all helped me to rationalize and understand its value better. The fieldwork further allowed me to undertake a variety of research methods: I conducted participant-observation, visual analysis, and interviews during my period in “the field” as well. The interviews were all done face-to-face and are in-depth, qualitative and semi-structured – recorded and transcribed afterwards, and can be found in appendix I.

Following the principle of reciprocity (Mauss 2002), I always brought a small gift for my interviewees, or invite them to dinner or drinks. I took a conversational approach during the interviews, which meant that I had a topic list and asked open questions. As my hypotheses and ideas evolved with the research, these topics and questions did too. The interviews generally took around an hour – on more than one occasion they lasted whole afternoons, intersected by spontaneous calligraphy-making on the spot and ending in dinners. They took place in a setting decided by the interviewee; sometimes I was invited to their workplace, studio, school or home, and sometimes we would agree to meet at a café or restaurant. Some interviews turned out to be joined (with two or three people instead of one); this happened on five occasions and was always requested by the interviewees themselves. They would invite a colleague or classmate to join, and ask me for permission. Anneke Meyer notes, and I concur, that this changes the research situation. Participants interact with each other as well as the interviewer, and these group dynamics change the data that can be gathered from these interviews as they become more discussions rather than answers (2008, 71). I regard these joint interviews as very useful. Because the participants had to explain or justify their point of view not only to me, but also to their professional peers, the conversations took on new dimensions that made me understand the discourse better. Then, there were many talks, random chats and serendipitous encounters with calligraphers, hobbyists, water calligraphers, taxi drivers, park visitors, students, children and parents that were not recorded and transcribed – I consider these as enormously valuable for gaining insights in the discourse as a whole. Finally, I have employed a visual analysis. I contend, following Lister and Wells, that the calligraphic character, the scroll and the calligraphic typeface – are “socially produced, distributed and consumed; within this cycle there are processes of transformation taking place and also of struggle and contest over what they mean and how they are used” (2001, 64). This then extends into the idea that objects, or as Bruno Latour (2005) coins them, “non- human agents” are as much a part of the social reality that I wish to analyze. Considering that “anything that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference is an actor” (2005, 72), I argue that the calligraphic object, the brush, the ink and the shape of the calligraphic character also are actors that make up the totality of the scenes of calligraphy under scrutiny. They need not only be considered, but deserve detailed analysis, as emphasized by Mieke Bal, since objects cannot speak, but “can be treated with enough respect for their irreducible

47 complexity and unyielding muteness” (2002, 45). I have followed the method offered by Lister and Wells (2001), who propose a visual analysis based on three concepts: contexts of viewing; contexts of production, and form and meaning, which I will shortly elucidate here.

Figure III: what do these images mean?

The first thing we need to ask, according to Lister and Wells, is where the image is located: do we deliberately seek it out in a gallery or do we see it in the streetscape, or at home? Then, we ask why: what does the viewer – in this case, the researcher – seek, and is their interest purposeful or idle? The experience of the encounter matters, according to Lister and Wells, and says something about the viewer. I have chosen the visual images with which I connected, or of which I felt it needed critical exploration; thus, making a deliberate stance as a researcher. Second are the contexts of production. In that category, I ask: how did the image get there? Lister and Wells argue that “this question shifts our attention from how we encounter the image to ones about its production by others and its distribution – to the intentions and motives of others, and the institutional and other social contexts, imperatives and constraints in which they work” (2001, 68). Whether or not I then accept or use the meanings the producers intended to give the image for my research purposes is another matter.

Finally, Lister and Wells propose to look at form and meaning. This is about the image “itself”, and what it means, and what its inherent properties are. In this context, I was helped by my experience in the MET museum in New York, where I spent some time analyzing traditional calligraphy, as well as auditing and following calligraphy classes in Beijing, and simply looking and talking about calligraphy with my informants. These experiences taught me how to look at calligraphy as art-historians specialized in calligraphy would do – inspecting the thickness of strokes, the properties of ink, the dryness of the brush, internal layout, composition, the properties of the paper, silk or stone, and the outer shape. I do not (at all) claim to have become an expert at calligraphy connoisseurship in the four and a half years spanning this research, but it helped me to understand and complicate the form and meaning of what I saw in front of me. The way in which calligraphy is visually analyzed in these settings, is very much based on social conventions. A dry brush, for example, is almost always interpreted as conveying expressive emotion. These conventions become a sort of code, “an extended system of signs which operates like a language (itself a code of uttered sounds or printed marks)” (Ibid., 71). Of course, every viewer “reads” an image differently, and this method can therefore be plural, messy and, to quote Lister and Wells a last time, “contested and even creative” (73). But this is true for any practice of reading and interpreting and should not hold back a researcher from careful and informed scrutiny of visual images.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Chapter one starts by asking who is taking calligraphy classes, and what their motivations are for doing so. Calligraphy schools are mushrooming throughout Beijing as calligraphy is becoming a popular pastime in the context of the current traditional culture fever

(chuantongre 传统热). Calligraphy class is now compulsory at elementary schools, and many universities are starting calligraphy BA and MA tracks to meet the resulting demand for calligraphy teachers nationwide. In this context, I ask how calligraphy is currently taught within different educational set-ups. Following a Foucauldian approach, this chapter argues that educational structures inform on how the state sets the conditions to produce citizens

49 as moral or obedient subjects. Foucault states that: “The exercise of power consists in guiding the possibility of conduct and putting in order the possible outcome” (Foucault 1982: 789). How are calligraphy and conduct connected? And how are these two notions combined in calligraphy class? How is this conduct related to the motivations of students that range from ideas of Chineseness, crafting for the nation and creativity? The theoretical trajectory of this chapter moves from what calligraphy education is supposed to do through looking at education rhetoric; to what it does do by analyzing calligraphy class in practice. Chapter two takes two public parks in Beijing as its ethnographic site and probes the activities of water calligraphers, practicing ephemeral water calligraphy as a pastime and physical exercise. I analyze how the distinctive spatial and ephemeral characteristics of water calligraphy are constitutive of new imaginations in calligraphy. Water calligraphy, done by elderly in Beijing, challenges the idea of creativity as the domain of a young urban class, while its ephemerality contests the increasingly prevalent idea that (urban) creativity is now, or should be, always forced into structures of commodification and governmentalization. Despite several creative deviations in water calligraphy, the adherence to the traditional discourse of calligraphy further speaks back to notions of creativity as novelty. Within the urban landscape, these pensioners carve out a creative space for themselves, outside designated art-districts and creative industries clusters. Critical interrogations of power, space and creativity in everyday life will be taken up through the theoretical perspectives of Michel de Certeau on everyday life as articulated in his work The Practice of Everyday Life (1984). These theorizations will be employed to ask how this everyday calligraphic practice carries a potential to creatively rearrange traditional practices of calligraphy. Chapter three looks at contemporary calligraphy. As a – still – rather undefined phenomenon, contemporary calligraphy is located either within the calligraphy scene or outside of it, using and employing calligraphic methods and aesthetics to create something that is calligraphy – but not quite -, artistically exploring the fringes and intersections between word, image, writing and art. This chapter asks how – both in theoretical conception and execution – contemporary calligraphers or contemporary-artists-working-with-calligraphy are indebted to traditional calligraphy, and how they talk back to, interact, and view each other. Through an analysis of works by Wang Dongling, Zeng Xiang and Qiu Zhijie, I probe the openings these artworks offer to the calligraphy scene, and what kinds of critiques are

50 enabled through their works. Chapter four explores the impact of online and app-based calligraphy communities through learning, motivational friendships, exhibition and practice. It does so by looking at two calligraphy learning apps and one WeChat group in which people share their calligraphies, to scrutinize the role of Internet-based platforms in developing calligraphy consumption, promoting connoisseurship, and forming appreciative communities. This chapter argues that the digital medium gains ground by catering to a desire for immediacy, yet at the same time the calligraphy software introduces hypermediacy, a form of awareness of the various media and the historical layering involved. The creation of native digital calligraphy is an opportunity for revisiting older media rather than erasing them. Chapter five looks at the calligraphic type font. As a remediation and evocation of the calligraphic character, this sign is ubiquitous. The last 35 years have seen a rapid expansion of the cultural industries, and this has allowed graphic designers to shape the landscape of calligraphy in everyday life: you find calligraphic hints within their designs in film posters, games, books, advertisements and buildings, while font designers labor meticulously to create new Chinese fonts by hand, still obeying the rules of calligraphy. Drawing on visual analysis and interviews with both graphic-, and font designers, this chapter analyses how the aesthetics in Chinese type font design mobilize calligraphic aesthetics, and argues that in search for creative input, creativity is located in a reengagement with a Chinese past that is constructed and mobilized as a creative past that affords an affective production. Conclusion. The final chapter presents my conclusion. I explain what we have gained from combining five sets of data on calligraphic practice, and approaching these as a discursive field. This methodology has, necessarily, excluded many other calligraphic practices, and I reflect on these. I discuss the theoretical implications of my findings and argue how the questions I have engaged with throughout are not limited to calligraphy, or to China, but are relevant for wider studies on creativity, the role of everyday practices in cultural politics, nation building and governing tactics. Finally, I reflect on the research process, and I present a future agenda, suggesting directions that new research could take.