Our summer Visiting Fellow Roland Buckingham Hsiao very kindly led a workshop on Chinese calligraphy a few weeks ago, which we greatly enjoyed. It was not only an opportunity to learn but to experience, which I am finding ever more important in my own research as I know are several colleagues in our network.

Roland both teaches and researches calligraphy, placing an important emphasis on writing as practice – which means that research is not only theoretical but also practical, observational and experiential. We began with an introduction to the traditional styles of Chinese calligraphy, as well as the ways in which aspects of Chinese writing have been adopted for other traditions and languages.

One of the examples that particularly struck me was the Lanting Xu (“Orchid Pavilion Preface”) of Wang Xi-zhi in the 4th century CE, famously written in a state of drunkenness and heightened emotion. The composition only survives in copies today, but what is fascinating is that master calligraphers copied it complete with its crossed out mistakes.

We began our practical introduction not with Cursive Script but with Seal Script – which Roland prefers because of the way it teaches you to control the brush. As with any practical experiment in writing, some of what I learned was unexpected.