Chapter 64: Gazing at the Moon and Wielding the Brush on Mid-Autumn Night

Chapter 64: Chapter 64: Gazing at the Moon and Wielding the Brush on Mid-Autumn Night

Chen Jingle had already reached the Ming Dynasty section of the national history.

It featured the widely popular trope: starting with a single begging bowl and ending with a hanging tree.

Since he often read time-travel novels set in the Ming Dynasty, Chen Jingle understood its historical development far better than that of other eras. He found reading through this period thoroughly captivating.

Although he wasn’t a nationalist, he still felt a sense of gratification that Zhu Chongba was able to expel the Tartars and restore China, even if Zhu Chongba later acknowledged the Yuan as the legitimate preceding dynasty to establish his own legal authority. At the same time, he felt speechless and dissatisfied with Old Zhu’s double standards and personal limitations.

Then there was Emperor Yongle, of whom it could be said, "Even after compiling the Yongle Encyclopedia into the greatest literary marvel, the history books will never record him as the rightful heir."

Or the so-called Gate Emperor, the Wala foreign exchange student, the Great Ming War God—that pig-riding monarch, Zhu Qizhen.

And don’t forget the Longevity Emperor, who "trained his body to be as slender as a crane, unafraid of palace maids strangling his neck," along with the Great Ming’s number one weightlifting champion, Young Master Xiao.

It had to be said, this dynasty was simply too full of memes.

However, as he truly followed the historical records down the timeline, a mere few strokes of the pen encapsulated a person’s entire life—or even the lives of millions. The feeling was profoundly heavy. People always spoke of using history as a mirror, but how many actually managed to do so?

Escaping the cyclical nature of history was incredibly difficult!

Looking at the entirety of Ming history, it unsurprisingly devolved into the old adage: "What did the Six Dynasties accomplish but further their own selfish, factional interests?" At the end of the day, systems were established by men, and abolishing them took nothing more than a single word. The demise of a leader bringing about the end of their policies, or people turning cold once a person steps down from power—these were the most common occurrences in the world.

Perhaps influenced by the history lesson, Chen Jingle let out a long sigh after finishing. He felt a deep urge to pour his heart out, but he didn’t know who to talk to. After a moment of thought, he brought out his brush, ink, paper, and inkstone.

These were the study materials he had purchased earlier. Since the next session was a practical lesson anyway, he decided he might as well practice his calligraphy!

"Since it’s the Mid-Autumn Festival, I’ll write a poem that fits the occasion," Chen Jingle said. He looked at the moon outside the window, pondered for a moment, and had his answer.

He dipped his brush in ink and flourished it across the paper!

He wrote the following:

Looking at the Moon on the Fifteenth Night by Wang Jian.

The courtyard floor is white, crows perch in the tree,

Cold dew silently wets the osmanthus flowers.

Tonight the bright moon is watched by everyone,

I wonder whose home this autumn melancholy will fall upon.

Signature: Mid-Autumn of the Jiachen Year, Chen Jingle.

Believe it or not, it was actually quite striking. With his emotions running high, what he wrote turned out quite different from his usual work. A lively yet subtly arrogant aura leaped off the paper.

It had been mentioned before that Chen Jingle studied calligraphy in his systematic knowledge classes. He primarily focused on Mi Fu’s style, but he had also dabbled in the fonts of other famous masters.

When studying calligraphy, people in the country usually couldn’t avoid The Two Kings, Mi Fu, and Yan Zhenqing. These four were hailed by scholars throughout history as top-tier calligraphers. Others, including Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, Zhao Mengfu, and Dong Qichang, were considered slightly inferior.

Chen Jingle’s calligraphy was built upon the foundation of Mi Fu’s style, absorbing the strengths of other masters and finally blending them with his own writing habits, primarily focusing on running script and regular script. His main approach was simply following his heart and doing whatever felt most comfortable!

The piece before him, "Looking at the Moon on the Fifteenth Night," followed the running-cursive style. The Tang Dynasty emphasized structure, while the Song Dynasty valued aesthetic charm. He might still be a bit short of founding his own school of calligraphy, but compared to modern practitioners, he had at least reached a masterly level.

A calligraphy style had a lot to do with the writer’s personality.

The old Chen Jingle could never have written characters like this. In local slang, his handwriting used to look "like a chicken scratching in the sand." Although that was an exaggeration, it certainly couldn’t be called beautiful; at best, it was legible when he wrote carefully. Not being able to write well during his school days had always been a lingering regret in his heart.

Later, with the system’s tutoring, he took multiple calligraphy lessons and slowly learned how to produce excellent handwriting. Now, it could be said that he had developed a distinct style.

The liveliness came from the inherently flowing nature of the running-cursive script, while the arrogance was related to the system. After all, he was a man with a system—it would be abnormal if he weren’t a little arrogant and wild. It was just that Chen Jingle didn’t wear his arrogance on his face. Besides, he had always been a somewhat proud person. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have washed his hands of everything and walked away immediately after a falling out with his business partner.

"This is really well written!"

Chen Jingle was quite satisfied with this piece of work. In a sense, this was a small milestone on his path in calligraphy. Both his style and technique had improved compared to before.

Riding this wave of inspiration, Chen Jingle struck while the iron was hot, dipping his brush and flourishing it to write another piece.

It was another poem. This time, it was a work by a modern person, an ancient-style poem that he really liked.

He wrote the following:

Ode to History by Li Mengtang.

While robes drape in high pavilions and state affairs are tuned,

Pity the world that whispers its quiet grievances.

The water that capsizes the boat is the tears of the common people,

Until the flood surges, the ruler remains unaware.

He signed it in the same manner. It perfectly captured the insights he gained from reading Ming history.

This time, he used Zhao Mengfu’s style of running script. Aside from the overall wildness, the strokes gave off a hint of melancholy and righteous indignation.

He thought, "Ugh, why am I acting like those ancients whose talents went unrecognized and who had no way to serve their country?"

Chen Jingle shook his head to clear his thoughts.

"But to be honest, I feel like this one is even better than the last," he muttered. "Have I really improved this much?"

Even Chen Jingle himself was a bit surprised.

When it came to evaluating the quality of calligraphy, there was actually no universal standard. However, there was a minimum baseline. Above this minimum baseline, every dynasty had its own aesthetic preferences. The unique beauty belonging to Chinese characters was completely different from any other medium.

Whether it was good or bad was, in fact, a highly subjective judgment. Even top-tier calligraphers held differing opinions, though most judged works based on a few aspects: technique, naturalness, emotion, innovation, and the artist’s moral character.

Among the famous masters throughout history, the one who most highly revered technique was Zhao Mengfu. He believed: "There are two aspects to studying calligraphy: first, brushwork, and second, character structure. If the brushwork is not refined, even if it looks good, it is poor; if the character structure is not wonderful, even if practiced, it feels raw. Only when a student of calligraphy understands this can they begin to discuss the art."

But this wasn’t always the case.

Take, for example, the Memorial for Nephew, known as the second greatest running script in the world. Among the top three running script masterpieces, it had the most alterations and the messiest handwriting. Yet, the sincere emotion overflowing from the brushstrokes left everyone who saw it completely stunned.

The mainstream pursuit throughout history leaned more toward naturalness—the state of returning to one’s original, unadorned purity that was widely esteemed in ancient times. Innovation could be seen in styles like the clerical-cursive script and the Slender Gold script. As for moral character, examples included the corrupt official Cai Jing and a certain modern individual whose calligraphy skills were outstanding but whose name could not be spoken.

As for Chen Jingle, he believed that as long as he found it aesthetically pleasing, it was fine—even if it was a rogue, amateurish style, as long as he wasn’t submitting it to competitions or exhibitions.

Good calligraphy gave the public a sense of beauty regardless of the font used. Even if one couldn’t read what was written, they could still perceive a strong formal beauty right on the paper.

Take Cai Xiang’s Foot Odor Thread, for instance.

Some people might argue that art is art, and it is distinct from mere prettiness. But Chen Jingle felt that art should also serve the public. Nowadays, some people adopted ugly, bizarre, and crazy styles just to gain attention, which somewhat deviated from the original intent of calligraphy.

Calligraphy referred to writing according to the characteristics and meanings of the characters, using specific brushwork, structures, and compositions to turn them into aesthetically pleasing works of art.

Rich! In! Beau! ty!

Divorced from those concepts, being ugly just for the sake of being ugly, or bizarre just for the sake of being bizarre, stripped away any right to be called calligraphy. It was even worse than the Kun style.

There was currently an unhealthy trend in the domestic calligraphy circle. While not true for everyone, at least a portion operated on the premise that if you were some CEO, a retired high-ranking official, or a Direct Disciple of a certain master, whatever you wrote was automatically considered "good."

Conversely, if you were a farmer or a factory worker, your work would be dismissed as having empty form without any soul, or outright condemned as rogue amateur scribbles. The same applied to poetry circles, traditional arts circles, and the like. Chen Jingle wasn’t sure about the national level, but he had seen plenty of this at the provincial and municipal levels.

Regardless of the industry or field, as long as the word "circle" was attached to it, fame, fortune, and mutual commercial flattery were inevitably involved.

If someone wasn’t chasing status within a circle and simply treated it as a hobby, casually writing for fun was perfectly fine. If someone truly wanted to climb the ranks, they would have to rely on their social status and learn how to kiss the right rings.

After finishing the two pieces of calligraphy, Chen Jingle felt as if the gloom in his heart had been swept clean.

He let out a long breath. Unable to resist, he took out his phone, snapped a photo, and posted it to his Friends Circle.

This was a rare occurrence; the last time he posted to his Friends Circle was, well, the last time he posted.