New Chinese Calligraphy Style 发展新书风

Chinese calligraphy is a unique form of arts that writes Chinese characters. For Chinese calligraphy to remain a vibrant art, it must follow closely the evolution of Chinese writing system and the calligraphers’ ability to do so will ensure its practical functionality. In the last century, the Chinese writing system has gone through some major changes unseen in the last two thousand years of its history and these changes provide a rare opportunity for calligraphers to develop a new Chinese calligraphy style (NCCS). However, we have not seen any major effort in China in the development of NCCS; perhaps calligraphers there are too overwhelmed by the popular use of pens and computing systems as writing tools, which they think would drive Chinese calligraphy to become a pure art form. But, this may not be the case, as it is the writing and reading habits of people that give life to its functionality. It is exactly with this in mind that we should focus on evolving a NCCS.

So far, we have seen at least the following changes that have happened to the Chinese writing system:

1. A new Simplified writing system has been introduced and is now the official writing system in mainland China and ASEAN countries which include Singapore and Malaysia. This provides the most challenging and rare opportunity for calligraphers to create a new style of writing the Simplified characters.

2. A new writing and reading habit has been evolved today that the text is to be written and read from left to right instead of from right to left. The NCCS should reflect this new writing and reading habit.

3. The use of Gregorian calendar is the common and well understood among the ordinary people. NCCS should use it in writing the inscriptions (supplementary notes). (I wish to acknowledge that this point was brought up by my calligraphy classmate Low Chee Keong (Lu Zhiqiang)).

It is our wish that the NCCS would sustain the practical functionality of Chinese calligraphy, so that it can continue to be part of our life and living, appear in our hawker centres, offices, buildings. Our school also can use it as a teaching tool for the Chinese language subject.

NCCS can be written in the following Chinese scripts:

1. The standard scripts which include official, clerical, regular or simplified script.

2. The running scripts which include running-regular, running-cursive or running-simplified script.

3. The Cursive scripts which include zhang-cursive, cursive or wild-cursive.

Shown here are some examples that conform to the NCCS format written by famous contemporary calligraphers.
这里所展示的是符合‘新书风’的一些当代书法作品范例。
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中华书法是书写中文的一种特有形式艺术。如果中国书法要继续保存旺盛生命力，它就应该紧密的跟随中文书写系统的演变。书法家在这方面的能力可以确保书法的实用性。上个（20）世纪，中文书写系统经历了两千年历史以来未见过的几个重大改革；这些改革为书家发展‘新书风’提供了一个绝对少有的契机。但是，在中国，我们却看不到他们对发展‘新书风’的努力。这可能是他们对钢笔与电脑书写的普遍应用感到不知所措，认为这会导致书法走向纯艺术的道路。可是，事实可能并非如此，因为书法的实用性其实来自文字的书写与应用习惯。就是基于这个理由，我们应该集中精力来发展‘新书风’。

中文书写系统至今至少有着以下的变化：

1． 简体字的引进。简体字已经是中国大陆及包括新加坡与马来西亚在内的亚细安的正式书写系统。这给予书法家提供了一个最具挑战性与绝对少有的良机来创造简体字的新书写风格。

2． 一个新的书写习惯正在演变。这个新的习惯是由左到右的书写与阅读习惯，而不是由右到左。新书风应该反映这个习惯。

3． 阳历的年与月以为一般民众所普遍使用与了解。新书风中的题款应加以应用。（这一点是书法同门师兄卢志强提出的，特此致谢。）

我们希望‘新书风’可以使书法的实用性得以持续，继续成为我们生活的一部分，在我们的小贩中心、办公室、建筑物出现。我们的学校也可以用它来作为华文语文的教科工具。

‘新书风’可以用以下字体来书写：

1． 真书：包括篆、隶、楷、简。

2． 行书：包括行楷、行草、行简。

3． 草书：包括章草、今草、狂草。

I have re-formatted some famous calligraphic works into NCCS as shown below.

我也将一些著名书法作品更改为‘新书风’格式，见以下图片。

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Below are the corresponding original works.

以下是原作。

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