My day started at 1:30pm. I was so happy to locate the noodle shop I love so much but only to find out the noodle shop I love is closed by 10am. They only sell 2 noodle soups. It opens at 5am and closes by 10am. Their business is so good that working for 5 hours is enough. They used to do lunch and dinner then they stopped dinner, now they have stopped lunch.Trying to locate another place to eat I decided to stop by a shop that looked like a calligraphy suppply place. It was small and dusty outside and inside. The place looked like a workshop and store all in one. It is easy to not take this place seriously. It had a creative mess running across the entire shop.
I asked the shop owner about calligraphy, letting him know I am an inexperience aspiring Chinese calligrapher who is interested in getting brushes for me and gifts for friends who are experienced calligraphers. Mr. Chen is the owner of this shop called "WenShanShe". I learned he is a national treasure in the art of calligraphy brush. He makes amazing collecter's museum peice calligraphy brushes. His work is displayed in the National Museum of Taiwan. It takes Mr. Chen an entire year to make a collector's museum quality brush for exhibitions.
He also made other brushes that was within my budget. Mr. Chen asked me what kinds of brush I was interested in, since I had no knowledge he spent the entire afternnon educating me for the next 4 hours. Forget about breakfast, I slept through it, forget about lunch, I slept throught it. I was straving when I walked by his shop and Mr. Chen's teaching on calligraphy took my interest that I bipassed the hunger.
He pulled out brushes and showed me how to test brushes and grades. I love Taiwan, it's just stuff like this that makes it so friendly. At the teashop people did the same too, now at this calligraphy shop too, there just is something very human about it all. The brush I like is the one that had a bit of bounce to it when you write and it returns to its form use after use instead of feathering out. He also told me not to wet my brush with water before and after use. It ruins the form of the brush. If the brush has been frequently used and looses its form it can be reformed. Mr. Chen mentioned good brushes are worth reforming and he can do that easily.
He pulled out inkless paper to show me how to test brushes. This inkless paper is reusable. All you have to do is wet the brush with water and as it comes in contact with paper the moisture creates dark spots on paper and when it dries it return as new. What a great thing to have. I decided to pick up a few of these magic paper. Sometimes I just don't want to mess with the ink and this makes it much more convenient to pull out and write and put away. I think I will tape the paper down like water color paper so that when it dries, it dries flat and straight as new. What a great invention! Stuff like this is great for practice then I won't have piles of paper from practice.
Mr. Chen makes amazing calligraphy brushes. He said this art is dying. It is hard to make a living out of this profession. Most common brushes are machine made in an assembly line. Artistically beautifully hand made brushes are difficult to put to food on the table. He was humble, he said he is famous because there isn't much of competition in his field. He makes a living from sellig his economic friendly beginner's brushes to Japan.
I decided to pick out brushes made from purple bamboo that was not a beginner's starter brush. It's for writer's brush 2nd from the fine point. I already have 2 large beginner's brush I want a nicer writer's brush for my elementry elevel writing. I asked Mr. Chen if he would be willing to engrave the brushes and he said only people who knew him as friend could ask him but since I knew to ask him he was willing to
do it. I spent more time looking up words and creating verses to be engraved on the brushes. He engraged it in Chinese script all in one connecting stroke .This man here is a friend of Mr. Chen who is a cotton fabric production owner who has factory in Taiwan and Shanghai. He looks very unassuming. He can pass you by but he is also the head of the city's philantropy organization. What a very quiet, polite, humble man who spoke gently and clearly.
