The art of learning Chinese

After a week of hanging around on the campus, I was kind of relieved to resume classes again on Friday. I was also stoked to start my Chinese calligraphy class! It’s one of my two electives this semester. The other is Kung Fu, which I’m super excited about. So far I’ve attended each class once and we just covered the basics – we learned about the history and various styles and implements of calligraphy, and in Kung Fu we did some stretching and strength exercises and learned the basic stances.

Calligraphy is a lot harder than it looks, and I never thought it looked easy. You need to simultaneously pay attention to the style, position, proportion, thickness, energy, and order of each stroke as you try to compose them all into a balanced and well-constructed character, and one wrong stroke can ruin the whole thing. I love how calligraphy manages to be both a strict discipline and highly expressive art form, combining the symbolic meanings of the words and the aesthetic appearance of the characters with the artistic expression of painting. A character is never painted the same way twice. I’ve also found it to be very meditative; focusing so many energies on a single brushstroke, it’s really easy to push every other thought out of your mind and just lose yourself in it. Actually, I’ve found it’s pretty much impossible to do it with something else on your mind. The first few times I tried it I found it kind of exhausting. After about an hour of copying characters I just couldn’t concentrate. Every time I try, though, I get a little more into it and feel a little more relaxed after. Last time Benson took me to the art room to practice, we were there until closing.

Hanging out in the art room is an experience in itself. Chongqing isn’t a tourist destination and the few tourists it does draw are Chinese; very few foreigners come here. Almost nobody I’ve talked to has travelled outside of the country, and I’m getting the impression that most people haven’t ever met a westerner in person and some have never even seen one. But western music, movies, TV shows and celebrities are popular here, and English studies are compulsory from middle school through high school, so they’re all very curious to meet us. Whenever I practice calligraphy in the art room with Benson, the other students do a double take and start whispering among themselves when they see me walk in. When I sit down and start painting they all crowd around to watch, and assuming I don’t understand any Chinese, they all start asking Benson questions about me – where am I from, am I his girlfriend, etc. It’s pretty intense and can be kind of uncomfortable, but it’s great practice and everyone’s friendly. Once they find out I speak some Chinese they start complimenting me and asking questions – how do I like China, can I eat Chinese food, have I been to any other cities in China – and then they’ll say “let’s be friends!” and give me their phone number. A girl I met there the other night is taking me to an art show on Sunday; I have no idea if it’s classical or contemporary, but I’m really looking forward to it and I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures.

By the way, I’ve started uploading all my pictures to Facebook instead of Windows Live because it’s just way more practical and I can write more in the captions, so for anyone who wants to check out the visual counterpart to this blog just go to my Facebook photo album. Maybe someday I’ll be able to load photos on Blogger, but for now this is just easier.

Chinese word of the day:
书法
Shūfǎ
Calligraphy