Chinese calligraphy is the quintessence of Chinese culture, which has a history of two thousand years. When the ancient Orientals carved the earliest abstract symbols on the walls of their cave houses, and on animal bones and tortoise shells, their symbolic action marked the beginning of the Chinese written language and civilization. There are mainly five styles of Chinese calligraphy, Seal Script, Clerical Script, Standard Script, Cursive Script, and Semi-cursive Script. Those scripts embody China’s personalities and attitudes. The Standard Script is widely used in today’s China, and there are some features to distinguish this style. For example, a Chinese character is written squarely. Usually, this style means upright personality. However, I think the most elegant style is the Clerical Script. When you look carefully at this style, you will find some specific characteristics. For instance, the horizontal stroke looks like a dancing silkworm. Many times when I practice the Clerical Script, it makes me think about 1930s Shanghai ladies, and my mind will bring up a beautiful face of a 1930s famous celebrity - Ruan Lingyu. Therefore, I decided to use Chinese calligraphy to portray 1930s Shanghai ladies.
There were some questions that I needed to consider as I began: How do I revive and remake these ladies by using Chinese calligraphy? How do I combine Chinese calligraphy routines with these ladies? As I investigated 1930s Shanghai history, I realized that something was left out of my initial consideration. In the golden era of the 1930s, movies became very popular in Shanghai, and movie stars led the fashion. On the other hand, large numbers of female intellectuals took to the streets to indignantly protest the invasion of Japan into China. After reviewing 1930s Shanghai history, I tried to use some Chinese characters to describe these Shanghai ladies.
I then chose some Chinese four -character idioms, for example, 悲歡離合, which means the vicissitude of life. Each character has an individual meaning: 悲 is sad, 歡 is joyful, 離 is leaving, and 合is reunion. It was a complex era of history with many facets, these Shanghai ladies, however, were described appropriately by these four-character idioms. To sum up, my purpose is to show the beauty of 1930s Shanghai ladies by using the beauty of Chinese calligraphy.