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| My brush pen arrived. Above is my first go, writing out this bit of Zhuangzi. |
From Zhuangzi "Metaphorical Language", Article 1.
Men assent to views which agree with their own, and oppose those which do not so agree. Those which agree with their own they hold to be right, and those which do not so agree they hold to be wrong.
Surely the very definition of Confirmation Bias. From 1800 years ago...
How to read the above in modern Mandarin, top to bottom, right to left:
Yǔ jǐ tóng zé yīng,
Bù yǔ jǐ tóng zé fǎn,
Tóng yú jǐ wéi shì zhī,
Yì yú jǐ wéi fēi zhī
[ADMISSION: the bottom right character (Ying) is incorrectly written. But you only get one go]
ADDED; I'm trying to write in what Chinese call "Cao Shu", which is more free-form than simple cursive, or Xing Shu. Up until this very minute I'd always thought Cao Shu meant "grass script" on the basis that the character Cao (草) means "grass", and I'd taken it to mean that the writing is way more cursive than normal and is kind of like grass. But I read in wiktionary that it's a calque, meaning "careless, sloppy or hasty". Still, it might be pretty much the same. I'll continue to call it "grass script". (In fact, it opens it up to me: I can just call it my careless, sloppy or hasty go at it....)
I've just got a new Dictionary of Cao Shu, from the Jiangxi Art Publishing House. It's great. Multiple examples of famous calligraphers' Grass Script over the millenia. When there's a choice, I prefer that of the Jin Dynasty calligrapher Wang Xizhi. That's what I try above.
