Chapter Nineteen: Wild grass writing
“I think he was just worried that he wouldn’t pass the test!” Little Fang’s squeaky voice echoed around the great hall.
There was a snort of derision. “Fu Shan? The great Fu Qingzhu? Not pass the test?” That was Cook.
Down in the town, I had seen large posters announcing an exhibition at the monastery, an exhibition of calligraphy and art work produced by the residents. On the path up the mountain there had been artfully designed strips of calligraphy with scraps of poems or Daoist quotes. They would not survive the winter to come, but then, they were not meant to.
The leaves along the path had begun to turn the brilliant golds and red of autumn, while the delicate ferns poking out of the cracks in the stone steps were still bright green with rows of brown dots along the underside. My anticipation grew as I climbed. I was curious to see what talent the monks had hidden away in their mountain retreat.
“Well, think about it.” The young librarian’s voice took on greater confidence. “Fu Shan was a great calligrapher, true, but kaishu was his weakest style, and that was the type of characters specified for the imperial exam. He didn’t want to be laughed at, especially at 72 years of age.”
“Weakest style? No way!” said Cook. “I’ve seen examples of his kaishu that were outstanding …”
From the far end of the Great Hall, a deep voice rumbled “It wasn’t the style that was the problem. It was that there’d no way Fu Shan would write what the Manchus wanted to hear!”
It was the fat monk, chuckling a bit as he came closer. “Can you imagine Fu Shan writing an exam essay saying ‘Oh we should all get along, Han and Manchu, striding into the future holding hands together!’ That was never going to happen.”
They all laughed, stopping their work. I had paused just outside the door, not wanting to interrupt. I’d been told they were here, setting up the exhibition. For some reason the little gatekeeper had blushed as he said this.
I walked in and greeted them. The fat monk and Cook looked happy to see me. Little Fang, not so much. The fat monk poured me a cup of tea, handed me a rag, and pointed toward some dusty tables.
Then he continued the discussion. “Yes but don’t forget Fu Shan had already fought the Manchus for almost thirty years. Twenty of those he’d spent in the mountains. He sold up his house and properties and went into the mountains before he was forty years old, remember?” The fat monk shook his head. “No, he would have sat down at the imperial exam and written an essay to Kangxi saying exactly what he thought.”
“And then he’d be right back in prison,” said Cook. “And you remember what happened to him there last time. He was lucky to have just been tortured. His comrades were all executed.”
There was silence while they went about setting up the exhibition, each lost in their thoughts.
“You know,” said the fat monk. “I think that was part of it.”
“Part of what?”
“His genius, and the direction it went.” He paused. “When someone suffers, goes through extraordinary experiences, it can give rise to extraordinary character.” He unrolled a scroll, examined it, rolled it back up. “You take rage at your country being taken over by outsiders, then add to that anger some survivor guilt, then layer that with shame …”
“Shame? What shame?” Little Fang asked.
“Shame at having to rely on friends who now work for the Manchus,” the fat monk replied. “Then you lace that through with a foreboding sense that the great Han civilisation is about to disappear after two thousand years, destroyed by these barbarians from the north and Bingo!”
There was another brief silence, but this was more bemused than thoughtful. Cook broke it. “Bingo? What do you mean, bingo?”
The fat monk shrugged and raised his hands palm up. “Well, look what Fu Shan did. He set up revolutionary societies all over Shanxi. He wrote histories, unofficial histories describing what actually happened at the end of the Ming. He investigated poetry, painting, the origin of Chinese characters, all aiming at a resurgence of Han Chinese culture.”
“Not to mention his influence on Chinese medicine,” I said.
They all stopped and looked at me. “He did medicine?’ Cook said. “You sure?”
Little Fang snorted. “Sounds like fake news to me,” he said. “Sort of like Jin Yong making him a character in his kungfu novel and saying that Fu Qingzhu was a great martial artist. Even reputable news channels are now stating that as fact too. I heard it again just the other day.”
“Well, for one thing,” Cook said, “It was the author Liang Yusheng who made Fu Qingzhu into a martial artist, not Jin Yong, so we might all need a fact check now and then.”
“But I loved that novel,” the fat monk said. “Seven Swords Come Down from Heaven Mountain. Fantastic!”
“I saw the TV series,” said Little Fang. “Seven Swordsmen. I think that’s where I first heard the name Fu Qingzhu. But my calligraphy teacher insisted that I learn more about the real person.” He laughed. “I still think of Fu Qingzhu as having a big sword and long white beard.”
“Anyway,” I said in a loud voice. They all stopped chattering and looked at me. “Fu Shan did medicine, for sure. All my Chinese medicine friends know his book on gynaecology, it is a classic in the field.”
They looked at each other. The fat monk shrugged. “Ok,” he said, adjusting the position of a little bonsai in relation to a piece of calligraphy. Silence echoed in the great hall.
I had a look around at what they had already set up. Here, a table set with the four treasures of the scholar: inkstick, paper, brush, and inkstone. There was an inkstick, gilded with a gold dragon and the character for virtue in clerical seal script on the surface. Here was a valuable green songhua inkstone carved in the shape of a gourd just cut from the trellis. Brushes of all sizes made with the tail fur of rabbit, fox and wolf. And fine xuanzhi: the very best paper made from the bark of the blue sandalwood, the Qingtan tree. But there were also chops: stone seals carved with characters cut in reverse so that they would print when coated with red ink, some of the stones square, squat and imposing, some tall and ethereal, some oval, some irregular. The jī xuě shí ‘chickenblood stone’, the ones traced through with brilliant red veins were the most impressive.
While I was looking, I heard Cook say “You know what I love about Fu Qingzhu? His freedom with the characters in his compositions, the brushstrokes. He knew each character so well! He knew their origins, the history of their transformations, even the elements that made them up. You know, one time, right in the middle of a large piece he was doing, he wrote Tian Di—Heaven and Earth—with just three solid lines for the first and three broken lines for the second.”
The fat monk paused where he stood, up on a stool adjusting a hook, with a slight frown on his face. “But that’s …”
“Yes. The trigrams Qian for heaven and Kun for earth, from the Book of Changes.”
“I guess that makes sense,’ the fat monk said.
“It makes more than sense,” Cook voice was excited. “The trigrams carry all their associations openly, like Kun earth being mother, nourishing, receptive and so on, but also equality, patterns, multitudes, cooking pots, cloth and handles, among other things.”
“So …”
“So when we just write the words heaven and earth,” Cook sketched天地in the dust on a low shelf, “we don’t think of all those associations, we just think of heaven above and earth below.”
The fat monk nodded. “And the Yijing is meant to be the mother of the Chinese language, the origin of the characters. Yes, I see what he was getting at. A few lines, but packed with meaning. Genius.”
“Gutsy, though,” Little Fang mused. “When you first look at Fu Shan’s calligraphy, some of his pieces, it looks like a little kid wrote it.”
Four druthers
“Well, Fu Shan had his famous Si Ning, Si Wu saying,” the fat monk said, snatching up a brush and dashing four lines off on a scrap of paper. We all crowded around to see.
寧拙毋巧，寧丑毋媚
寧支離毋清滑，寧真率毋安排
I’d rather be clumsy than clever,
I’d rather be ugly than cute,
I’d rather be deformed than slick,
I’d rather be easy-going and authentic than organised and fake.
“Yes, my calligraphy teacher talked about that,” Little Fang said. “But I don’t get the ‘deformed’ part.”
“That comes from Zhuangzi,” Cook said. “The World of Men chapter. Shu the deformed. Remember? How Shu could swagger right through the gangs that had come to press young men into the army, because they wouldn’t take him anyway? How he got extra rations because he was disabled? The passage ends saying something like ‘His deformed body was enough for him to happily live out his years, so just imagine how useful deformed virtue might be!’”
“Huh? How does that make sense?” said Little Fang. He was voicing my own thoughts.
“It is meant to make you think,” said the fat monk. “And it harks back to Laozi chapter two “Everybody knows beautiful is beautiful. What an ugly thing that is!”
“Yes, the dangers of just blithely going along with external opinion, without having any internal standard of one’s own,” said Cook. “But Fu Shan himself knew that his art would not be appreciated by his contemporaries. He even said … hold on, I was looking this up for the exhibition notes …” he rummaged in a bag on the floor, finally pulling out a tattered notebook. “Here we are. He said:
There is calligraphy that is truly good, and calligraphy that is truly bad. The truly good is not recognized by people as good, nor is the truly bad recognized as bad. Calligraphy that achieves fame quickly must be bad. Several decades to a hundred years must pass, and then, if there are keen critics, a final judgement can be made.”
Cook looked up. “That was from a comment that he stuck right in the middle of some calligraphy he did, copying out passages from Zhuangzi, so all this was obviously on his mind.”
Little Fang was outraged. “What! He just stuck a comment right in the middle of an art work? How arrogant is that?”
Cook laughed. “You want arrogant? Let me read you this. But as I do, think to yourself: what if he’s right?” He flipped a couple of pages in the old notebook, lifted it and read out:
I claim to having divine eyes when viewing paintings, essays, poetry and calligraphy. Of hundred and millions of things, not one escapes them. Every time I try to tell someone the significance of something, he cannot understand it. I dare say that in ages to come my views will be counted as unique insights. Although I would be crazy to keep making this claim, I would also be crazy if I did not. I know, however, that my own creations are not equal to my sensibilities.
“Unbelievable!” Little Fang shook his head. “Imagine if I said something like that!”
We all laughed. “Yep, that would be crazy,” said the fat monk. “But then, although you are pretty good, you are not a genius at poetry, essays, painting and calligraphy like Fu Shan was.”
“Not to mention medicine,” a new voice called out. We turned. It was the abbot.
“Fang Zhang,” I said, smiling. I just stopped myself rushing over to embrace him. “I didn’t know you had come back!” The little figure seemed to almost shine with vigour.
“Yes, I finished my retreat. Back to work. Fatty did a good job though, it looks like. The exhibition was his idea.”
“But wait,” said Cook. ‘You mean Fu Qingzhu really did do medicine?”
The abbot looked surprised. “Of course,” he said. “In fact, do you remember that wash I gave you for your …”
Cook cleared his throat loudly, drowning out the abbot’s words.
The abbot was taken aback, then recovered and said “Yes, well, Fu Qingzhu had a very simple formula for any itchy skin lesion and it’s really effective. It is just four herbs: Hua Jiao (), Ai Ye (), Fang Feng () and ten stalks of old Cong: scallions. Just boil them up and apply the liquid to the itchy places.”
“But that’s just folk medicine,” said Little Fang. “Everybody knows a few recipes like that. Doesn’t prove Fu Shan was some great physician.”
“Well,” the abbot said, “I remember a poem of his that talked about ‘burning formulas’ and ‘wracking his brain about common illnesses’ and …
“You see?” said Little Fang. “Does that sound like a famous old Chinese doctor?”
The abbot closed his eyes for a moment, then shrugged and said “Yes, it’s true, some people make the argument that Fu Shan could not possibly be so good at so many things,” the abbot said. “But I think that type of thinking is simply because we live in such a pessimistic society.”
“You really think so?” the fat monk said.
“I know you don’t agree,” said the abbot. “But look around. So many people are beaten down with their lives. Everyone tells them they are no good at this, or that, or how dare they think that they might be able to actually do something wonderful.”
Cook spoke up. “But by that they usually mean ‘making money’.”
“That’s right,” said the abbot. “Yet look here, look at this very exhibition. I mean, it’s great. Take this piece,” he said, indicating a huge wild cursive style calligraphy work. “I mean, that could be the work of the great monk Huai Su himself! Who would think that …”
We were interrupted by a gaggle of reporters ushered in by the gatekeeper, flashbulbs going off and generally making a nuisance of themselves. But they were there to publicise the exhibition, so we retreated to the abbot’s room overlooking the rear fields.
“Have a look at this,’ the abbot said. He pulled out a scroll and unrolled it.
“An original? Little Fang asked with amazement.
“No, it’s a print,” said the Abbot. “The originals are in a Japanese museum. A friend saw this print there and brought it back for me.”
“What?” said Cook. “Those are fu characters![1] Aren’t they?”
“But the fu-script is meant to be secret,” Little Fang said. “Only a Daoist priest would know it, and only use that type of script when writing a talisman.”
“Well, Fu Shan was one of us, don’t forget,’ said the abbot. “And he did a series of twelve scrolls for the master of a Daoist monastery. This print is one of them. He called them yóu xiān shī: poems for a roving immortal.[2]”
“But these are not exactly fu characters, see?” said the fat monk. “It is just a weird type of seal script. It’s like he was suggesting fu type talismanic characters, in order to create an otherworldly atmosphere.”
“That’s right,” said Cook. “They were meant to be hung in a temple, right? So that makes sense.”
“He may also have just been having a bit of fun,” said Little Fang. “Look here, on the side, at the luo kuan where he talks about who he was doing the calligraphy for. Um, it’s a bit cursive but I can make this out:
My friends Zheng the Fourth and Li the Fifth wanted to get to know the master of this temple, so they asked me for this ugly piece of writing for a gift. I dashed these off while singing; no one can work out what style they are. I’m old now and just wrote anyhow, now when I see them I laugh at myself.”
“He was certainly a character,” said the abbot. “There’s this story about him and his son Fu Mei that I read in a collection of old stories …” he rummaged around and dragged an old book out from the bottom of a haphazard pile, blowing off the dust with a puff of breath.
I saw on it the words Further Stories from Willow Cliff[3] and exclaimed “Fangzhang! I didn’t know you liked those old ghost stories!”
He laughed sheepishly and held the book up. “Xu Kun, the author of this one, is meant to be the reincarnation of Pu Songling.”
“The guy that wrote Strange Tales of Liaozhai?” said Little Fang.
“Yes. But there is a story in here, let me see …” the abbot ruffled the pages, “Yes, about Fu Shan and his son Fu Mei. Here it is. I won’t read it, I’ll just … Yes, one night Fu Qingzhu came home drunk with wine. He dashed off a piece of calligraphy, then passed out. His son Fu Mei, who was also a great calligrapher, saw the writing and decided to have some fun with his dad. So he copied the piece, left the copy and hid the original. When Fu Shan woke up, he picked up the copy, frowned, shook his head and sighed. His son asked him what the matter was. Fu Shan said ‘I wrote this last night, but now that I look at it, there is no middle qi in the characters.’ He shook his head and sighed again. ‘Looks like I’m not long for this world,’ he said. Fu Mei was shocked. He went pale and confessed all.”
“Fu Shan was joking, right?” said Little Fang. “He knew it was done by his son, and wanted to teach him a lesson?”
‘Unfortunately, no,” said the abbot. “Fu Shan turned out to be right. Fu Mei died before the next grain harvest. Fu Shan did not survive him for long, either. They both died in 1684.”
The room was suddenly lit by the rays of the sun dropping below the eaves outside.
“Uh oh, look at the sun,” said the fat monk. “We’re meant to be at the opening.”
We rushed out, the abbot in the lead. But as we neared the Great Hall, he slowed down with his arms out to the sides to hold us back. Then he proceeded in a stately manner to enter the hall. We adopted his pace, an escort of honour.
The media and a surprisingly large number of townspeople had gathered, with the mayor and several other notables waiting by the side of the stage.
“Fang Zhang,” they said, bowing to the abbot and to us.
“Mayor,” said the abbot. He greeted several others by name.
“Mr. Lin here will present the awards as the representative of the local seal engraving society. They did the judging, as you know.”
After public introductions, welcomes and speeches, when the awards were announced the fat monk was amongst the honourable mentions for a striking octagonal seal that he had carved, Little Fang the librarian took third place for a work in the style of Yan Zhengqing, and first place went to the huge and magnificent wild cursive calligraphy piece, created by none other than the old gatekeeper.
GATEKEEPER’S WINNING CHARACTER CAN BE SEEN AT: https://thefatmonk.net/2024/03/21/winning-wild-grass-character
Here too is a youtube lecture on Fu Qingzhu
https://tinyurl.com/459brfb5
Endnotes:
[1] 符The esoteric fu script, used for talisman, is meant to connect the three realms Heaven, Earth and Man.
[2] 游仙詩.
[3] 柳崖外编 Liǔ Yá Wài Biān Also translated as Unauthorised Compilations from Willow Cliff, it was written by Xu Kun (徐昆) in 1791.
