Introduction

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). 12 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.

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