How I Came to Love Chinese Calligraphy

Western calligraphy is beautiful and I know that I've written quite a few posts describing the history of it and some well-known examples. But if we were to go halfway across the world and step into eastern territory, we would find that the power of words and messages is just as important if not so, more important.

I've taken four semesters of elementary level Chinese, and I often wonder why. Chinese has to be the hardest language I've ever studied and while I took it I questioned what forced caused me to take those courses. I would stay up hours on end trying to memorize tones, pinyin (written Chinese) and characters at the same time. It wasn't just learning the one Chinese form and then it's English definition, but three Chinese definitions and one English definition.

When it comes down to it I think it was the characters. The fact that one small symbol could communicate a word or concept was fun to me. It was simple and straightforward. There was no need for conjugations or tenses, it was simply a figure.

photo source: personal photo