Zhong Shuhe's Writing Brush Essay

After Chun Zhu left, her usual brush hung there. I don't think we should ignore them too much. I tried to write a few words the other day, but it was always awkward. Is it because my hands are bad or because I write for a long time? This reminds me of my decades-long relationship with brushes.

When I was five years old, I began to learn Chinese characters, that is, writing "man, mouth, knife and ruler" on wool paper with a brush, then writing 1, 2, 3 and 4 on slate with a stone pen, and then writing A, B, C and D on foreign paper with a pen. This pen is not a Parker fountain pen, but a long wooden pen with a short nib, which can only be written with blue ink. Maobian paper Xuan paper is not "foreign" but made in China. It is used to write Chinese characters with pen and ink. Never touch the pen blue ink. This is a car running on two roads, and so are two cultures.

I have never been a national quintessence, but I always feel that writing wool paper with a brush is much better than writing slate with a stone pen and writing foreign paper with a pen. Stone pens and pens have been used for several years, and no one has picked them up since they were abandoned; The pen has been with us for a long time. It keeps pace with the times desperately, but it is seldom used now. Only the brush with the same appearance has been with me. Come to think of it, this is also a very interesting thing.

Eight years of Anti-Japanese War is my junior high school stage. All primary schools use a brush, and only arithmetic classes use a pencil to do calculus. Junior high school also mainly uses brush and pen to write English. Many students in small counties can't buy blue ink in glass bottles, so they can only dip their pens into copper ink boxes and take it for granted. I'm not that shabby. I have to hand in two big characters in my China calligraphy class, a medium-sized pen "Total annihilation" and an old extension "Mystery Tower". But the method of opening letters is disappointing, and 32 Chinese characters often can't get double circles. Chinese performance is average, but the composition that stipulates "minor revision" is always too lazy to start another draft. I picked up my notebook and wrote two pages, then handed in my papers in a hurry, so that I often carried "rat excrement" like "I'm afraid of doodling" in my comment on writing, and I couldn't take it home.

After I left school, I became an editor and revised my manuscript with a brush. In the 1950s, it was stipulated that manuscripts should be revised in blue, reviewed in red and finalized in green. These three pens were all used in 1978. This kind of work, which is similar to a text inspector, is already very boring. A brush dipped in red and green water is far less comfortable than an inkstone licking ink. After complaining a lot, he became a rightist and lost his pen container. In order to avoid disaster, there is no paper and pen in the house, but after all, there is no way. When I was pulling a scooter, I wrote to Zhou Zuoren, asking for a 12 cent brush, a small bottle of ink and some "material paper". This letter was actually kept in Badaowan and entered the Luxun Museum during the Cultural Revolution. After the property was returned to its original owner, Zhou Fengyi made a copy and sent it to me. During the nine years of labor reform during the Cultural Revolution, my writing brush never left, and I was ordered to write slogans. I can still write a lot of words, but I have to be careful not to make mistakes. A friend in distress accidentally wrote "endless" as "endless" and was almost shot. Fortunately, these things have finally passed.

"Life begins with literacy." If this is true, I have been suffering with the brush for more than 70 years, not too long. It's a pity that I still can't write Chinese calligraphy well. This cover is limited by talent, which is beyond human power. But for the writing brush, I always have a feeling that it is one of the elements of Chinese character culture, and I can't bear to watch it decline. A few years ago, Mr. Bao from Hong Kong wrote to ask for "Changsha Famous Pen". In his memory, it was the product "Peng Sanhe" he used to write his composition 60 years ago, so he asked around. Only then did he know that Peng's public-private partnership had retained its signboard and was destroyed in the Great Leap Forward. Chickens and wolves have long been reduced to ordinary brands, and business operators are reluctant to produce and supply because of their meager profits. Finally, I asked someone to buy a few pieces, and I was still "feeding", but it was impossible to try them. Just because the words "feather and wolf hair" were engraved on the pen, it was barely sent to Hong Kong. Teacher Bao was disappointed, and I felt sorry for it.

I think the chicken and the wolf are dead, and the future of the writing brush is hopeless, which is impossible. Brush is a special tool for writing Chinese characters. As long as Chinese characters are immortal, they are useful. Of all the characters in the world, only the calligraphy of Chinese characters has become an independent art, and with the development of computer technology, calligraphy always uses brush and Xuan paper. People in East and Southeast Asia eat rice with chopsticks, accounting for almost a quarter of the world's population. These people can use chopsticks or a brush, that is, they can accept Chinese characters without a brush. The vitality of China's calligraphy art is rooted in a quarter of the world's population, so there is no need to be pessimistic, and there is no need to be pessimistic about writing brushes.

Both "pen" and "chopsticks" are "bamboo initials". Both pens and chopsticks are made of bamboo. Bamboo and rice are Gramineae plants, and their origins just cover the cultural circle of Chinese characters. In cultural geography and cultural history, this phenomenon seems worth studying, from the perspective of man and nature.

(May 2007)