Every year, at the peach blossoms’ bloom

An old-times scholar was seen

With his Chinese ink and red papers…

( Old-times scholars – Vu Dinh Lien)

The above old-times scholar displayed his Chinese ink and red papers to earn his living by writing Chinese characters per bypassers’ requests. His profession did not need sublimely-meaning words and literature. At most, the words  were popular ones like: Happiness, Prosperity, Longevity, Mansion full of gold and gems, etc… However, these words must be written with a high state-of-the-art style so that they could be brought home and hung on the walls or columns as paintings. The exquisite requirement for these old-times scholars was that they had to master dexterity:

His dexterity drew strokes

Looking like a dancing phoenix and a soaring dragon…

In order to create such dancing-phoenix and soaring-dragon like strokes, the writer must have a Calligraphy.

CALLIGRAPHY is the way of creating artistic and impressive strokes – one of the highly spiritual and refined arts.

Thirty-five thousand years ago, pre-historical people carved their very first pictures  in grottoes and caves. Nevertheless, knowing how to draw was not enough to help human beings surpass their primitive stage of living. Only when written words  came into existence could men reach their turning point to enter some real cultural civilization.

Written words were created due to the need of keeping accounting books. The most ancient written words in the form of signs appeared in the Mesopotamia delta of the Near Middle East about 4,000 years before Christ. China’s characters took a longer time to come into being – about 2,000 years before Christ. A Chinese legend has it that the ancient Chinese observed birds’ and animals’ footprints on snow or sand fields to create Chinese characters. Among the most ancient traces of Chinese characters was a form of characters carved on tortoises’ backs named Tortoise Shell’s Characters conveying the content of Kinh Dich dating from about the 16^th century till the 11^th century before Christ. It was said that later in China scholar Quach Mat Nhuoc was the one who could read and understand those Tortoise Shell’s Characters.

The Japanese people gave birth to their written words in the 5^th century before Christ, which originated from the Chinese characters and first introduced in Japan by the Chinese via Buddha’s teaching books. Over a long period of 13 centuries, the Japanese had to use Chinese characters. Until the beginning of the 9^th century, a number of the Royal Court’s ladies created a particular style of Japan’s written words named Hiragana, which was generated from Chinese characters but much more simplified and formed with Japanese style. Similarly, Vietnam’s Han Thuyen and pioneer linguists created Chinese-transcribed Vietnamese.

In Western countries, English and French written words originated from Arabian, Greek and Roman ancient characters. At Charles Quint library, there still are archives of sheets written in texts with non-stop running sentences without any space between words or chapters. It wasn’t until 1637, after the printing profession had been developed that there appeared for the first time in Europe an “ intelligent” book  designed and presented in the modern style. That was “Discours de la Méthode” by René Descartes, written in French.

Thus, written words have gone through a process of prolonged and complicated development, which has consumed a lot of human beings’ mental devotion  and heartfelt dedication.

Concurrently with the creation of written words was the creation of how to form the characters of such written words.

At the very beginning and in the simplest style, people used their fingers to write on the sand’s surface or the earth’s surface. In order to preserve the written words, people wrote on clay cakes, rocks or wooden boards. The ancient Chinese wrote their history on bamboo slices. The Brahmins wrote their prayers with burning flame pens on la boi slabs, goat skin patches…When paper was invented, people used brushes, reed pens, bamboo pens, iron pens, ball point pens….to write.

And now, on the computers written words are not formed by pens but by “bits”.

Any form of characters or character forming style was to appear in plain forms at the very beginning. It took people being familiar with words presented in writing or viewing before the writers began to think of more eye-catching style of writing.  How to create attractive written words was gradually upgraded to the level of fine arts – that is calligraphy. In Calligraphy, the written words are deeply imbued with the writer’s  “Ego”.  In order to have such an infiltration of “Ego”, the writer does not only possess a dexterity, but also a spirit. Therefore, without a spiritual character and a strong personality, one cannot master a calligraphy. China is considered a country with many great calligraphers. Among the distinguished ones, Vuong Hy Chi of the Tan dynasty was the most famous calligrapher. The Tan book wrote: in the 9^th Vinh Hoa year, on the lunar 3th March,  the Vuong and 41 other then scholars  got together at Lan Dinh, Coi Ke district in Chiet Giang province. On this occasion, Vuong Hy Chi handwrote a text comprising of 28 rows, 324 characters, which looked so beautiful that people were deeply charmed.

Succeeding Vuong Hy Chi was Vuong Duy of the Nuong dynasty. Then came four distinguished calligraphers: Te, Hoang, Me, Sai of the Tong dynasty.

Later, Chinese novelist Kim Dung with his rich imagination brought sword art and martial arts into calligraphy, fabricating many dramatic stories in Knight Activities or Do Long Lady:

Giang-Hu Top Leader, precious sword Do Long

Commanding people…

Apart from fabricated fabulous anecdotes, the real thing in the above stories was the art of calligraphy, which has achieved its peak glory in China.

In Viet Nam,  Cao Ba Quat was a top calligrapher of great fame in the old times.   Nowadays, there  is an anecdote about poet Hoang Trung Thong’s calligraphy. A long time ago, poet Hoang Cam opened an inn to sell Long Van glutinous rice liquor in  Ha Noi, Hoang Trung Thong. He was very fond of drinking, once visited the inn and became heavily drunk. During his dead intoxication, he stood up and wrote on the inn’s wall a beautiful Chinese word, meaning liquor. It is a regret that besides that Liquor word, he had no other calligraphy works.

The national language we are using though is just a young writing in Latin characters, but more and more writers have heightened it to the level of calligraphy. Famous musician Trinh Cong Son handwriting used in writing his songs’ words is a form of calligraphy having been imitated by many youths in their handwriting, which is fairly similar to the original.

It is said that calligraphy is an art higher than painting a “head”. That is still yet to be confirmed. However, actually these days while paintings are very popular in the markets, calligraphy works are rarely found. Both calligraphers and calligraphy works connoisseurs  are quite scarce .   ( AN OLD –TIMES  SCHOLAR).