Calligraphy calms student minds

In some Asian cultures, there are different activities that function as a way to calm a person’s peace of mind. In India, people practice yoga. In China, people practice calligraphy, a type of writing and communication.

There are different types of calligraphy practiced all across the world, but at IU’s Asian Culture Center, students in Calligraphy Club practice East Asian Calligraphy, which uses Chinese characters that are three to four thousand years old, instructor Xing Zhou said.

“Calligraphy is a very personal tradition based on Chinese character, a visual art,” Zhou said. “We use traditional characters and then we find history and use style to express our own feelings.”

Zhou said each Chinese character is used to express a word, and sometimes two characters can be used together to create a word with a different meaning. He said the main difference between calligraphy and English writing is that all the lines are the same in English, while in Chinese calligraphy, the brush strokes can cause the lines to vary.

Calligraphy is practiced with a different technique than holding a regular paint brush. The style precision comes from a technique based on posture, wrist tension and finger placement on the brush, which is made out of a type of animal hair, Zhou said.

Calligraphy is generally used with ink and rice paper, but in Zhou’s class students use blank newspaper because it is cheaper and easier to find in stores.

Calligraphy Club participant and Bloomington resident Erica Kendall said she has experience in Asian brush painting, so beginning calligraphy was not too difficult for her to learn. Kendall said while she always had a fondness of anything Asian, she also liked to explore different styles of calligraphy and the mental effects of practicing it.

“It’s really easy to get enveloped in it,” Kendall said. “It’s very relaxing and very calming, easy to do and fun to practice. I’m somewhat of a perfectionist and it works well for me.”

Kendall said she not only practices calligraphy in class but at home, taking with her different calligraphy books that Zhou will lend her from his own collection or the library. She said that once she begins to paint, the time flies.

New student Hao Guo, a first year master’s student, said when she was in China it took her no effort to use the computer or a pen to write, but now that she has come to the States, she suddenly has a new interest in calligraphy.

“It seems a little weird to practice and learn now that I am in the States,” Guo said.  
The students practice in silence, besides when Zhou is teaching or helping individual students. For the remainder of the class, the students bask in silence.

“You must be very quiet or else you cannot think,” Guo said.

For Zhou, the club is about more than the technique.

“I want the students to share and learn different culture and get ideas for their studies or job or life, just to find another interest,” Zhou said.