Videos about calligraphy, China

The Three Foundations of the Arts


These are calligraphy, poetry and music.


Chinese Calligraphy


Calligraphy is a highly regarded art in China. It is much more than stylised writing in the Western sense of calligraphy and is more akin to painting. Non-depictional and just black and white, line and space, Chinese calligraphy is startlingly beautiful in its simplicity yet enables a very wide range of expression and takes many years to master. Even a Westerner with no experience can sense the beauty of a good example, with its innate sense of balance. And the practice of it requires a harmony of self, brush and paper. Good calligraphy is said to embody the natural forms and movements of the natural world.


A popular type of calligraphy involves writing poetry in water outdoors using a large brush on the pavement.


Chinese Music


Chimes, bells drums and flutes (which could be made quite simply from bamboo), date back into antiquity. Later, by the time of the Tang dynasty (618 - 907) stringed instruments, such as the pipa (similar to the lute) and zither, which are plucked, and the erhu, with its vertically held strings, and Mongolian Horse-Headed Fiddle, which use a bow, were developed.


By the Tang dynasty, music - and dance - was widely enjoyed by all people and could be experienced at fairs organised by various temples. Folk songs telling the everyday tales of fishermen, herders and farmers were hugely popular among the peasants.


Influences from Buddhism and Islam added further flavour to the repertoire of Chinese music.


An interesting variant on the flute is made of clay and is a rounded pot with a number of holes and a spout to blow into. It resembles a small teapot and produces a beautiful sound.


Chinese Poetry


The 'Book of Songs' (Shi Jing) was the first major collection of Chinese poetry, comprising both aristocratic poems and rustic poetry, probably derived from folk-songs. It comprises 305 poems, some possibly written as early as 1000 BC. The work is one of the 'Five Classics' (Wu Jing), canonized by the Han Dynasty. The poems are said to have been selected and edited by Confucius from a total corpus of about three-thousand poems.


Chinese poetry has been influenced by the spiritual traditions of Buddhism and Taoism. The subject is often everyday life, a moment in time, appreciation of nature and a pointing to the underlying unity of life.


One of China's most venerated poets is Li Po (AD 701-762) who is also known as Li Bai. Here is an example of his poetry.



Visiting a Taoist on TaiTien Mountain


Amongst bubbling streams a dog barks;
peach blossom is heavy with dew;
here and there a deer
can be seen in forest glades.
No sound of the mid-day bell
enters this vastness,
where blue mist rises
from bamboo groves;
and from a high peak
hangs a waterfall.
No-one knows where he has gone,
so sadly I rest,
with my back leaning
against a pine.

The Chinese Language


A brief introduction to the Chinese Language


Writing


Chinese script developed from pictograms. Early pictograms were in use about 3,500 years ago. Originally these were something like the pictograms we are familiar with from the ancient Egyptians. Over the years these gradually changed from depictional to be increasingly abstract although in some cases the similarity of original pictogram and modern character can still be seen.


Many characters are composed of two or more simpler characters. Some words are composed of two or more characters. The meaning of such words of more than one character may be based on the combined meanings or the combined sounds.


To be reasonably proficient one would need to know about 2,000 characters although there are many many more. On the mainland of China, the characters exist in a 'simplified' form, though perhaps do not look so to the western eye!


The order that the strokes of a character are written is important. One starts at the top and then left to right as one works one's way down. When writing with speed, cursive styles are possible. Historically, this behaviour will have contributed to the evolution of characters. Cursive styles are also sometimes used in Chinese calligraphy, which is an important art-form in Chinese culture.


What we call Chinese script is not the only script still used, but is the official common language (along with Mandarin for spoken Chinese). There are also Tibetan, Manchurian and Mongolian scripts. The Tibetan script, because of geographic location, resembles Indian and Arabic scripts.


Pin-Yin, an alphabet-based phonetic rendition of spoken Chinese is learned by young schoolchildren as an aid to pronunciation, just as it is for the foreigner learning Chinese. Pin-Yin enables non Chinese speakers to get a rough idea of the sound of Chinese and also allows words to be more easily recognised and remembered by westerners. Hence, place names are usually marked in Pin-Yin as well as traditional Chinese script.


Note that older Chinese people cannot read Pin-Yin.


Spoken Chinese


The official spoken language of China is called Mandarin and is based on the dialect native to Beijing.


Mandarin is a tonal language with four tones: flat, rising, falling and falling then rising. Ideally, Pin-Yin would be written with accents to indicate the tones but seldom is. For example, the sound 'ba' means 'eight' if said with a flat tone but 'father' if spoken with a rising tone.

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