Wong Kok Liang 黄国良

Wong Kok Liang (Wang Guoliang 1920 – 2004) was famous for his calligraphy written in clerical (lishu) script.

Wong Kok Liang was also called Wong Long, or Shigong. He was born in 1920 in the Wanning County, Hainan Province of China. He entered the Jian Yi Teachers’ College in 1935 for a 4-year course. After completed his study in 1939, the Japanese invaded China and he moved to Singapore to seek his fortune. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, he worked briefly in Singapore before he was employed as teacher in a school in Riau of Indonesia for one year. On 1 July, 1947, he joined Nanyang Siang Pau and worked for 32 years until his retirement in 1979.

After his retirement, he became a calligrapher teacher for a number of organisations, and had many students who are good at writing calligraphy in clerical script. In order to provide a platform for the learners of calligraphy to interact with each other and thus exchange experiences in learning calligraphy, he worked on setting up a calligraphy society. In 1992, the Hanshi Calligraphy Society was registered and he became its advisor and calligraphy teacher.

He passed away on 24 March, 2004.

He talked about his calligraphy learning journey during an interview. As he was a young boy in village, his father encouraged and guided him in learning calligraphy, and he had developed a special love of calligraphy. He father started him with the script of Wei stele. A few years later, as he learned more about the subject, he decided that the clerical style of Weng Fanggang would benefit him more, so he switched to focus on learning Weng’s calligraphy.

He once said, ‘after I have mastered the basics of the clerical script, I came across the Caoqian Stele, which I found it to be especially bony, and the writing style is leisure and strong. I had therefore decided to move from Weng’s calligraphy to Caoqian stele.’ He later also practiced the scripts from the Han steles. In fact, he had never stopped learning the clerical script.

Wong Kok Liang had achieved much in writing the clerical script (lishu). He paid much attention to the execution of the strokes and organising the structure, and wrote them conscientiously. His learning attitude was indeed a good model for us to follow. In the last years of his life, he worked hard on learning the walking script (xingshu). However, perhaps because he had not spent much time in writing this calligraphic style, we have not seen much of his good works in xingshu.

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在新加坡书法界，黄国良 (1920-2004) 以专写隶书而闻名。

黄国良，也称黄龙，或石公。1920年在中国海南省万宁县出生。1935年进入万宁县立简易师范，并于1939年毕业。毕业后，因日本入侵中国而移居新加坡。1945年日本投降后，曾到印尼廖内的端本学校当过一年的教师。1947年7月1日加入‘南洋商报’，在那里工作了32年，直至1979年退休为止。

退休后，他在不少社团教导书法，培育出了不少书写隶书的好手。为了加强学员们的联系，促进书法交流，他提出创办一个独立的书法学会，于是，‘汉石书艺学会’就于1992年正式成立，并担任其顾问与导师。

他于2004年3月24日逝世。

黄国良曾在接受访问时谈到学习书法的经过。幼时在家乡，受到父亲的鼓励与开导，因此特别喜欢书法。他父亲引导他从魏碑入手，几年后他涉猎日广，发现翁方刚的隶书更有学习价值，于是，便集中精神在翁方纲的隶书上。

他说：‘学隶书有了基础后，有一次接触到曹全碑，觉得曹全碑特别有骨气，字体风情飘逸而又坚强，于是，我又从翁方刚的隶书转移到曹全碑上面。’后又临写汉碑。一生学习隶书，从未中断。

黄老在隶书上的造诣，堪称大家。尤其是他笔划结构，一丝不苟，可谓后学之典范。于晚年又孜孜不倦地学习行书。可能是学习行书的时间不长吧，所能看到他好的行书作品不多。