While electronic devices with their enticing touch-screens proliferate, the practice of writing by hand dwindles. But the dance-like sweeps and variations in depth of Chinese calligraphic writing still hold a remarkable attraction.

“I sometimes watch my daughter writing. I become so intensely focused that I tend to forget the time. When I look at the clock, it is often around midnight,” says 46-year-old You Guo­xian, who often becomes moved when watching his daughter, You Kai­yin, practicing her calligraphy by copying recognized works. In April, she won second prize in the xing­shu and cao­shu (semi-cursive and cursive scripts) category of the 2012 Youth Calligraphy and Seal Carving Contest sponsored by the Education and Culture Foundation of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC).

The tranquil process of brush writing relaxes the mind. This is the simplest form of bliss.

Over the past five years since age 10, You Kai­yin has never stopped practicing despite the pressures of schoolwork. Originally her parents simply hoped learning calligraphy would help to cultivate a pleasant disposition. However, after learning for five years, You has displayed great potential for a young calligrapher. And this has not been the result of chance, but of dedication and pure hard work.

Her mother searched high and low to find a good calligraphy teacher, and finally found the perfect choice in Lin Long-dar, owner of Ni Zhou Studio and associate professor in the Department of Painting and Calligraphy Arts at National Taiwan University of Arts. Lin has been teaching calligraphy from his studio for the past decade and has developed quite a reputation. Places are limited, so parents have to book their children in a year in advance.

Lin’s students have participated in the TSMC Education and Culture Foundation’s youth calligraphy contest since its launch in 2009, and have won prizes every year. These positive results have attracted even more parents to ring his studio doorbell.

“From my several decades of teaching experience, I see that ability always appears in the normal distribution curve: the majority are in the middle, with the superior and inferior at each end. My responsibility is to push them ever forward.” Lin has high expectations for his students, and hopes that some of them at least will carry on the tradition. He’s very strict: if they don’t take the work seriously, they’re severely reprimanded.

Calligrapher Hou Chi-liang watches attentively as one of his students copies a model. The results of the student’s concentration are important, but the process is equally so.

For Chinese, calligraphy provides a unique artistic language, rooted as it is in the soil of Chinese culture as a visual form. Even today, shop signboards on the street typically feature the writing styles of Tang-Dynasty master calligraphers Ou­yang Xun or Yan Zhen­qing.

“Calligraphy inspires contributions for the cultural and creative industry,” says Tseng Fan-cheng, chairman of the TSMC Education and Culture Foundation, who is always enthused when talking about calligraphy.

Tseng, who enjoys collecting recognized examples of calligraphy and visiting calligraphy exhibitions, says that TSMC supports the art “because learning calligraphy is the best way to nurture a young person’s personality and sense of aesthetic.” And because of changes in writing media, the past daily function and need for calligraphy has dwindled. So by running contests, TSMC intends to stimulate the current wave of popularity for learning calligraphy.

With TSMC’s strong backing and expert marketing skills, the results have been encouraging. Tseng says that although nowadays not many schools include calligraphy in the curriculum, and in general the number of people learning calligraphy has dropped sharply, “those who love calligraphy will continue to embrace and support the tradition. And in particular if parents enjoy calligraphy themselves, they’ll encourage their children to learn it.”

Lin Long-dar agrees that the learning process from emulating models, then writing independently, to finally creating one’s own style takes a long time. One common feature among those children who continue the study for a long period lies in the fact that they enjoy their parents’ full support.

“More and more calligraphy contests are being held in Taiwan with at least 100-odd events annually. This is indicative of the growing popularity of calligraphy in today’s society.” Hong Neng­shi, owner of Hui Feng Tang, Taiwan’s largest calligraphy supplies vendor, says that in the past, the majority of customers buying calligraphy copybooks and brushes were schools. But now the company’s revenue comes mainly from calligraphy clubs and associations. In recent years, annual revenue has grown by over 20%.

As more calligraphers are running classes, the fashion has spread from children to adults. Renowned calligrapher Hou Chi-liang’s studio Shi Yan Zhai is one example.

“Chinese calligraphy is an empirical­ endeavor. It requires practice to fully understand its depth and intricacies, to be able to enjoy the writing. You could never comprehend the feeling of swimming by just standing on a bridge looking into the water. It’s impossible to imagine without practice,” says Hou.

Modern society tends to bring anxiety, so many people have gone back to become aware of the advantages of learning calligraphy. Many adult students have passed through Shi Yan Zhai, and Hou in particular is known to be a strict teacher. His students have to practice ­every day. So while many of them are busy at work and with family, somehow they fit it into their schedule every day.

After many years of study, You Kaiyin has become a master of writing xingshu and caoshu, and the experience has drawn her family closer together. You won second prize in the xingshu and caoshu category of the TSMC Education and Culture Foundation’s 2012 Youth Calligraphy Contest. At left is her prizewinning work.

However, to pass on the heritage, we cannot depend solely on the private sector. School education must pitch in. Going back a few decades, calligraphy was one of the key elements of the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement. In former years, calligraphy lessons were scheduled once a week in the elementary school curriculum for students from grades three to six.

“Although the range of calligraphy that students used to learn in school was limited, at least it allowed them to come to terms with the basic skills of brush writing, and get to know the Tang-Dynasty regular-script models,” says Lin Long-dar. Calligraphy is still listed as an arts subject in the elementary and junior high school curriculum, but because the Ministry of Education does not make the number of teaching hours explicit, calligraphy lessons have almost disappeared.

In recent years, a number of people have called on society to refocus on calligraphy. The greatest hope of calligrapher Tong Yang-tze, who received a National Cultural Award earlier this year, is that the Ministry of Education will implement a system allowing children to learn calligraphy from a young age, and hopefully inspiring a new generation to practice brush writing once more.

Lin Long-dar glimpses a new opportunity in the soon-to-be-implemented 12 years of national education. He believes that this is an opportunity to reintroduce calligraphy lessons in schools. But the problem of finding qualified teachers must be faced first.

Calligrapher Guan Da-ching, with more than two decades of teaching calligraphy behind him, notes that “in the past, teachers who had passed through the normal teacher-training system generally obtained a solid grounding in calligraphy,” but nowadays these students have to study a wide range of other subjects and often don’t have time for extra subjects. If sufficient numbers don’t take calligraphy at university, it’s difficult to see how there will ever be enough teachers to restore it to the school system.

Calligrapher Tong Yang-tze’s exhibition The Movement of Silence displays her creativity, fusing Western-style graphic design with traditional Chinese calligraphy.

Questions about how to pass on the heritage, how to learn calligraphy and how to teach are all regular topics for debate and discussion.

“Copying the works of masters is a process that beginners must go through, but how to achieve this is the key to success in learning calligraphy.” Hou Chi-liang explains that copying models means observing the masters’ works circumspectly, and from this learning the many techniques of brush writing. The process aims at building solid technique in the fundamental brush strokes: dots, horizontals, verticals, hooks, rising, left-falling, short left-falling, and right-falling. But to what extent should learners copy the masters? There are many questions that need to be considered.

Hou provides an example. Copying kai­shu (regular script) with a Jiu Cheng Gong model (Ou­yang Xun’s work) is the most common method in teaching. “But the writing form of this model is extremely rigorous. It’s very difficult to copy well. Sometimes the copied characters may look like the originals, but these are the mere shapes and forms. There is much more to the art than this: the brush needs to be manipulated correctly in order to achieve the higher levels of skill. Nevertheless, many teachers press their students to constantly copy models, often resulting in frustration and loss of interest.”

“What is the best calligraphy method? While there are as many opinions as there are teachers, learning calligraphy needs to change in today’s fast-paced society to become more efficient,” says Hou. It needs to be made to seem less forbidding in order to attract more people to the study, and to encourage and enhance people’s appreciation of calligraphic works. Society doesn’t need many calligraphers, but as long as there are people interested in learning calligraphy, and some are able to appreciate good work, calligraphy will survive.

“The practical aspect of calligraphy is disappearing. It may become a pure art, and its function in the daily life of society will continue to decline.” Hou reflects that whenever he reads the models of ancient calligraphers—the letters that Su ­Dongpo wrote to his friends, for example­—he often thinks, “Should I write a letter to a friend with my brush?”

The National Palace Museum’s collection includes a great number of letters from the four master calligraphers of the Northern Song Dynasty, the most exquisite of which are letters written to friends.

Hou encourages his students who have learned calligraphy over a period of time to use their brush to write notes, a diary, and letters. The brush writing conveys elegant, classical and pure feelings, and because brush writing must be done slowly, it helps the writer to think more logically and clearly.

Despite the pressures of our fast-paced modern society, the traditional and inherently slow art of calligraphy is searching for new circumstance.

“When you have nothing to do, writing quietly with a brush is the simplest, the easiest and the most profound happiness in the world,” says Hou. Write quietly!