The ‘write brother’
A Wuhan native has garnered a huge online following and hundreds of students thanks to his vast knowledge of the ancient art of calligraphy, Li Yingxue reports.
It was the third day of self-quarantine before 37-year-old Cheng Tao could go back to his office in Xinxiang, Henan province, after the long Spring Festival holiday. After dinner, Cheng laid out a scholar’s toolkit — writing brush, ink stick, ink slab and paper — and set up his phone on the desk.
At 6:45 pm, he opened a live education app and began a third lesson in his introduction to clerical script. Luo Shaowen, who is also known as the Brush Brother, began to impart his wisdom.
It’s the fourth calligraphy course Cheng has taken from Luo. Cheng started his first course, an introduction to regular script, last year, which made calligraphy a daily hobby for him. For this Spring Festival, Cheng wrote his own or spring couplets, and pasted them on his front door.
“Studying calligraphy online is quite convenient for those of us who have a full-time day job, as you can take the lesson whenever you are available,” Cheng says.
Cheng used to watch calligraphy vloggers on video-sharing platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou and, even though he thinks their work is beautiful, he wanted to study from a professional.
Luo, 36, who holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in calligraphy from the School of Arts and Communication at Beijing Normal University, has been teaching the ancient writing skill since his graduate study years. Now, he is a calligraphy teacher at an elementary school in Beijing and has been teaching adults calligraphy online for almost three years during his spare time.
In 2015, he started to make and upload video lessons online, demonstrating how to produce the strokes in regular script, such as the dot, horizontal and vertical strokes.
He has been prolific, having uploaded some 2,000 videos which have been watched more than 1.6 million times in total.
In his videos, he not only shows viewers how to write specific passages, but also teaches them how to make fan-shaped paper upon which to inscribe calligraphic verses and auspicious sentences, or recounts the stories and history behind some of the collections in the Palace Museum.
Luo’s original intention for the videos was simple — he has a habit of collecting material about calligraphy, and he wanted to share them with people on the internet.
As well as uploading his library of information, under the pseudonym of Brush Brother, he also took to popular Chinese micro-blogging platform, Sina Weibo, to answer other users’ questions about calligraphy.
As time went on, he noticed a pattern of many repeated questions, especially about basic things, such as how to hold the brush, or whether it is best to sit or stand to write. He decided that he would prepare a comprehensive series of lessons.
However, creating such programs is hard work — a 10-second video requires at least half an hour to film and edit. He also has to get up as early as 5 am to record his videos, or there will be too much background noise.
When Luo began his first online calligraphy course, there was no one doing anything similar, so “it was a matter of trial and error”, he recalls.
In traditional face-to-face calligraphy teaching, there is one problem: When the students gather around the teacher, only the ones who stand on his left have a clear view of the technique. Viewing from any other angle will result in missing some of the teacher’s demonstration.
With online courses, however, that problem disappears. Not only do the videos provide the best perspective all of the time, but students can go back to watch the video over and over again as many times as necessary, to see the way the brush moves across the paper.
In April 2017, encouraged by his fans, Luo started his first paid calligraphy course. Soon, he had more than 40 people sign up to learn from him. Now, each of his courses will attract around 200 students of different ages and professions.
In his live courses, he teaches the theory and history of a particular style of calligraphy first, before demonstrating its technique and answering questions from his students.
Cheng likes the Q&A sessions, which he believes makes the course more like an offline face-to-face learning experience. “He not only teaches the calligraphy technique, but also tells us the stories, history and context of the style of calligraphy we are practicing,” says Cheng.
Luo sees his calligraphy courses as a product, which he is always updating and perfecting.
Each year Luo will update the eight-week introduction course for regular script and clerical script separately. To encourage his students to continue practicing calligraphy, he gives all his previous students free access to all future updated versions of the courses they take.
To make his course more attractive and fun, Luo has tried to encourage everyday use of the skills his students learn. “Calligraphy and seal cutting can be applied to our everyday life — a note for your lover or a name tag for your kid can add a little fun and is not too hard to learn,” he says.
To help his students to memorize the characters that are unique to clerical script, he finds a way to swap them with the regular Chinese characters in popular song lyrics. This way, his students not only enjoy music, but subliminally learn while doing so.
He now runs courses, including entry and advanced level, in calligraphy, calligraphy appreciation and seal cutting. Luo has also opened an annual course where the students need to practice calligraphy each day.
“Some of the students give up after one course, and I also have many students that return and have gradually turned calligraphy into a regular hobby,” Luo says.
He is planning to begin yet another new course in the summer, but from a different perspective — how to do what he does. The course will focus on how to become a professional calligraphy teacher.
Besides running WeChat groups to communicate with his students, he also runs offline events, such as poetry writing sessions at a quadrangle courtyard in Beijing.
Luo was born and raised in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, and he wanted to show his support for the people of his hometown. So, on Jan 24, he held a free course, leading students on a “tour” of the Palace Museum, Beijing, by discussing the calligraphy collection inside the Forbidden City in a Wuhan accent, hoping to offer some light relief for viewers in Hubei.
He is obsessed with the calligraphy collection of the Palace Museums in both Beijing and Taipei. He can recite the story behind almost every piece in the collection of the Palace Museum in Taipei, even though he hasn’t even visited.
Despite being taught calligraphy since age 5 by his father, a calligraphy teacher, he did not find his passion for the art form until he majored in the subject at college and now he can’t go a day without writing.
“Whenever I practice using a copybook and I produce strokes that happen to be the same as the original calligrapher, I feel like I have opened a conversation with them, which is quite amazing,” he says.
Luo has a 5-year-old daughter and one of his motives for making the online courses is that he hopes to accumulate enough experience, to teach his daughter in the future.
“Surprisingly, she holds everything like holding a brush,” Luo says.
He hopes his daughter can go on and find a similar passion for calligraphy. “If she can find happiness in this field, it will bring her more pleasure than ordinary games ever can.”