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日本語
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On Writing Chinese Characters
From Dai Ichi Branch Program of 14 April 1985
In China, calligraphy ("beautiful writing") is one of the fine arts, as much as the painting of pictures, and a fine calligrapher must study and practice as diligently as any other artist. Although, of course, most Western students cannot hope to become artistic calligraphers, some understanding of the value and beauty of Chinese writing adds interest to the study of the language, whether the student plans to acquire only a purely utilitarian knowledge of a few characters, or whether he. hopes to learn to write Chinese ) letters, read Chinese literature, or use Chinese source materials in study or research.
Even for the beginner, it is important to learn to write the characters correctly, according to principles evolved through experience by countless generations of Chinese calligraphers. Chief among these are the following:
The pen should move from left to right and from top to bottom (in general, though sometimes, for certain short strokes, it may move slantingly upward to the right or strongly downward to the left, as is shown in the first character below).
The appearance of strokes and of characters 'should be straight, even, and proportional. The component parts of each character should be in proportion to each other, and the size and spacing of characters on a page should be proportional.
The action of writing should not be hesitant or uncertain, but firm and vigorous, and the strokes should appear distinct and vivid.
If these principles are observed faithfully in practice, the results should be acceptable.
For
each character there is a proper order in which its component strokes
should be written, although in certain minor details there is variation
in the writing of different individuals. The strokes of the large
characters below are numbered to indicate their order. The student
should write each character at least four times, and should place the
proper number beside each stroke the first time. Each future written
assignment should be practiced in the same way. The student will thus
learn not only to write the characters in the conventional Chinese way,
but also to count the number of strokes in each character, an essential
in consulting dictionaries and indexes. In the long run this system will
prove much more efficient and time-saving than mere hit-or-miss copying.
