Ｔｈｅ Ｍａｎ Ｗｈｏ Ｅｎｒｉｃｈｅｓ Ｃａｌｌｉｇｒａｐｈｙ

Ｓｕｎ　Ｃｈｕｎｔｉｎｇ

Long before I met Wang Yuxi, I had read of his calligraphy in news media and seen his handwritings here and there. My impression was that his art was firmly rooted in tradition, that he had very solid training, and that he pursued a natural style. Recently I have met him in person. My new impression is that he is a master calligrapher engaged in promoting calligraphy and traditional culture.

Wang Yuxi is a master calligrapher. Born in October, 1939, he began to take calligraphy lessons at 6 at a private school. He has never stopped practicing the art since then. Versed in all the calligraphic scripts, he has created a style of his own and made profound explorations in calligraphy.

And he is more than a calligrapher. His hometown is Tengzhou where Mo Tze (c.468BC-c.376BC) was born and near where Confucius and Mencius were born. This probably explains why Wang Yuxi is an authority on the great scholar and thinker more than 2,400 years ago. I was deeply impressed by the 100-volume Complete Works of Mo Tze, an ambitious cultural project headed by Wang Yuxi. The collection is more than a treasure of the ancient masters philosophical insights and meditations. It was also a tour de force of calligraphy. Some texts of Mo Tze are in calligraphy written by Wang. One of the 100 volumes is a book of reviews on the great scholar over a period of 2,300 years compiled by Wang. Wang handwrote the reviews in eight traditional scripts. Readers can compare a handwritten passage with a printed one in the regular script. In the mid July 2001, the inscriptions of the comments were viewed by state leaders and calligraphers at an exhibition in Beijing. It was a success.

The fact that Wang used to be a vice governor of Shandong Province and a vice chairman of the standing committee of NPC Shandong branch helped him promote Mo Tze. He is now the honorary chairman of China Mo Tze Research Society, director of Chinese Calligraphers Association and honorary chairman of Shandong Provincial Calligraphers Association.

Wang Yuxi is also a collector of ink stones, the designing and manufacturing of which has been an art for centuries. The biggest ink stone he collected is a bronze one which measures 4.6 meters in length and 2.6 meters in width and weighs 2.6 tons. In June, 2006, he donated 442 ink stones in his collection to the Mo Tze Research Center of Shandong University.□