Recently, on the Internet, I accidentally swiped a fountain pen teaching video.
The man in the video, while playing the accordion, teaches people to learn to write pen characters, with the rhythm, uses music to practice strokes, and happily says "practice words are so happy", this video is on station B, there are millions of views, everyone is attracted by this interesting video.
And the interesting man in the video is Pang Zhonghua, who is known as the "first person in hard pen calligraphy".
Speaking of Pang Zhonghua, no one knows the post-80s and post-90s, he is the youth memory of this generation, which has influenced the writing Xi of a generation.
At that time, who was not a student who did not have a copy of "Pang Zhonghua Calligraphy", and who was not forced by his parents to practice a few "Pang Zhonghua Calligraphy"?
The post-80s, post-90s and even post-00s are all shouting: Grandpa Pang, you should produce less posters.
Pang Zhonghua said that forcing him to practice calligraphy is a painful teaching method, and the method is wrong, and he wants to promote the "happy teaching method" so that children can write well in happiness.
He also wants to spread the Chinese character writing culture to the world, so that the world will fall in love with Chinese characters.
But in the past 10 years, Pang Zhonghua has gradually faded out of public view. What has he done all these years? Has his wish been granted?
Today, let's talk about Pang Zhonghua's story.
In October 1945, in the village of Daba Mountain, Dazhou, Sichuan, Pang Zhonghua was born in an ordinary family.
Pang Zhonghua started school when he was five or six years old, and the classroom was in a land temple, and the first class Xi learned to write calligraphy.
The pen is a simple brush bought from a village merchant, the paper is rough and yellowed rough-edged paper, and the ink grinding is to take a broken bowl and turn it over, and the round bottom of the bowl is used as an inkstone.
Even though the conditions were simple, Pang Zhonghua cherished the opportunity to learn and carefully imitate Xi stroke by stroke according to the teacher's demonstration.
At that time, Pang Zhonghua was most envious that the head teacher Yuan had the only fountain pen in Daba Mountain, whenever Teacher Yuan wrote, Pang Zhonghua always stood quietly aside, staring straight at the eyes, and the teacher used the bright pen to write smooth lines.
He longed to have a pen of his own, but it was too difficult for Pang Zhonghua, who needed to help his neighbors herd cattle to earn a bowl of porridge to drink.
So, he made his own fountain pen.
He used a sickle to cut a thumb-thick spotted bamboo, cut it into the length of a fountain pen, cut one end into the shape of a fountain pen, and made a small slit in the middle, and he also made a pen sleeve to cover the pen holder.
The "fountain pen" can also be pinned to the pocket, and this bamboo "fountain pen" is dipped in ink to write, and the lines written are like real fountain pens.
The young Pang Zhonghua was so happy, holding a pen, riding on the back of a cow, and proudly walked through the village and walked in front of his classmates.
Seeing Pang Zhonghua's creative works, Mr. Yuan praised him in the class and encouraged him to continue to maintain this creative spirit.
This special bamboo "fountain pen" accompanied Pang Zhonghua through the initial enlightenment education, and he used this "fountain pen" to copy page after page, book after book, and his heart was full of infinite fun.
In this way, Pang Zhonghua and the pen formed an indissoluble fate.
In 1953, 8-year-old Pang Zhonghua walked out of Daba Mountain and was taken to Chongqing by his uncle to study, and his uncle also gave him the first real fountain pen in his life.
He took the pen and looked at it, and he couldn't put it down, and he couldn't sleep with joy, and he wrote on the paper until late at night.
When he was in primary school in Chongqing, he met his calligraphy teacher, who was also his homeroom teacher at the time, Mr. Huang.
Mr. Huang often praised Pang Zhonghua's good handwriting and asked him to write on the blackboard to demonstrate.
This kind of education based on encouragement and praise also influenced Pang Zhonghua's later teaching direction, Pang Zhonghua believes that the standard of being a good teacher is to truly awaken students' enthusiasm for learning and Xi, rather than relying on suppression and compulsion to teach.
After Pang Zhonghua became famous, some people kept asking Pang Zhonghua to comment on their own words, and some people's handwriting was indeed very poor, but Pang Zhonghua could always find out the advantages from it, fully encourage them, and avoid damaging the enthusiasm of the other party.
When he was a student, Pang Zhonghua cherished every opportunity to learn Xi, in addition to learning the knowledge of textbooks and practicing Xi calligraphy, he also studied music, and at the age of 12, he began to learn Xi accordion at the Chongqing Children's Palace.
The study of music Xi seemed to have nothing to do with calligraphy at the time, but it profoundly influenced his calligraphy creation and teaching in the future.
After graduating from university in 1965, he was assigned to work in the North China Geological Team, which was well paid, but life in the mountains was quite boring.
In order to pass the time, the other team members like to play cards, drink and listen to the radio in their spare time.
But Pang Zhonghua was not interested in these things at all, and was accompanied by an accordion and various books.
In addition to completing his own work, he also has to exercise, read, Xi and play the violin, and this Xi habit has been with him for decades.
Pang Zhonghua said that it was reading and practicing calligraphy that made him quiet, so that he could calm down and accumulate knowledge in the mountains.
Once, he read Mr. Lu Xun's opinion on fountain pen characters, Mr. Lu Xun advocated writing fountain pen characters, and did not think that fountain pen characters were inferior to brush characters, which had a great impact on him.
In China, the fountain pen is a writing tool used by hundreds of millions of people every day, and the fountain pen writing has its unique beauty, but there is no fountain pen calligraphy in China.
Pang Zhonghua feels that the more places no one has visited, the more abundant mineral deposits there are, which is the same as the principle of geological exploration.
Pang Zhonghua, who is good at thinking, began to reposition his life and deeply cultivate hard-pen calligraphy.
He made a grand wish to write a pen and script that belonged to the Chinese.
At that moment, he should not have expected that the process of realizing this wish would be so difficult.
Since he had a new goal, Pang Zhonghua was greatly encouraged, and a glorious sense of mission was always spurring him.
The toolbox became the desk he carried with him, and the tent became the study where he walked.
When others were drinking and playing cards, he used a fountain pen to carefully trace various fonts of Wang, Zhao, Yan, Ou and Liu, and when others chatted and slept, he carefully studied the commonalities between the brush and the fountain pen in the structure of Chinese characters, and explored how to inherit the beauty of traditional Chinese calligraphy in pen writing.
He worked hard to overcome the huge gap between the real environment and his ideals, and while conscientiously engaged in geological exploration work that had nothing to do with writing, he carefully studied the content of the manuscript word by word.
In 1968, Pang Zhonghua finally completed his first book manuscript - "Talking about Learning to Write Fountain Pen Characters".
The main content of the book is why to write good pen characters, some simple skills for writing pen characters, most of which are hard pen calligraphy Chinese character demonstration notes written by Pang Zhonghua.
After finishing writing, Pang Zhonghua submitted his manuscript to major publishing houses but was rejected. In the 12 years since the completion of the book, Pang Zhonghua has repeatedly submitted manuscripts and been rejected, and there are a large stack of rejection letters.
The turning point of fate appeared in 1979, with the help of Wen Huaisha and Jiang Feng, the book titled "Talking about Learning to Write Fountain Pen Characters" was finally published by Tianjin People's Fine Arts Publishing House in July 1980.
At this moment, Pang Zhonghua has been waiting for 12 years.
When the first edition of the book was ordered, the demand for 800,000 copies came from Xinhua bookstores across the country, and the publishers were shocked, and the editors did not believe that they could sell so much, so they decided to print 200,000 copies first.
200,000 copies, which was already a lot at that time, but unexpectedly, it was sold out in two months, and the publishing house dared to start printing. It was 1980, and this 32-page book sold more than a million copies.
Opportunities are always reserved for those who are prepared, and life is through precipitation and accumulation in order to usher in the real highlight moment.
In the early 80s, under the tide of reform and opening up, the people of the whole country worked hard and were quite eager for cultural knowledge.
With the vigorous popularization of primary and secondary education, the number of literate people in the country has increased significantly compared with the initial period. But at the same time, there are very few good cultural works on the market, especially the teaching works of hard pen calligraphy.
Therefore, Pang Zhonghua's book caught up with a very good era and became an instant hit as soon as it was released.
The positioning of this book is very accurate, and this booklet by Pang Zhonghua sold more than 10 million copies throughout the 80s, making it the number one bestseller in China in the entire 80s.
Since then, various publishing invitations from the publishing house have come, and Pang Zhonghua has published hundreds of books and notebooks in one go, and Pang Zhonghua's books published later began to print the three words "Pang Zhonghua" and his portrait on the cover.
Throughout the eighties and nineties, any bookstore in the country must have Pang Zhonghua's books in a prominent position, even if you are not a calligraphy lover, you will be familiar with the name "Pang Zhonghua", and know that there is a person named Pang Zhonghua who writes very well.
Conservatively calculated, since 1980, the circulation of Pang Zhonghua's various calligraphy has exceeded 150 million copies, and the informal channels have exceeded 300 million copies.
Pang Zhonghua's calligraphy has been carefully copied in the hands of generations of students, influencing the writing Xi of hundreds of millions of Chinese.
Pang Zhonghua was completely red.
Some schools, institutions, and enterprises in various places have invited Pang Zhonghua to give reports, and his life has also been changed.
In 1983, Pang Zhonghua received a letter from CCTV, opened it, and invited him to give a lecture on "Fountain Pen Calligraphy".
Later, there were too many speeches to give, and he was too busy, so he resigned from the geological team and devoted himself to teaching calligraphy with a hard pen.
After becoming famous, Pang Zhonghua was not complacent at all, but worked harder. In addition to writing, he studied pedagogy, educational psychology, reading books on literature, history and philosophy, art, etc., and wrote a large number of reading notes.
Inspired by the "synaesthesia" in Mr. Qian Zhongshu's "Pipe Cone Weaving", Pang Zhonghua created a music pedagogy.
"Calligraphy and music have a rhythm," he says. "In music, there are lengths, thicknesses, weights, speeds and slowness, and calligraphy is drawn with lines, and its lines are divided into length, thickness, lightness, and speed. ”
Pang Zhonghua put his self-created music teaching method on TV, playing the accordion with his left hand, humming the beat of the music, and writing with his right hand, which was extremely expressive and attracted countless fans for a while.
Until now, on Douyin and Station B, there are often young people who turn out his TV videos of the year and make them into short videos, and he is nicknamed "the musician delayed by calligraphy".
In the 80s, TV began to be popularized on a large scale in China, and CCTV was the only national TV channel.
Because of the funny and practical style of the program, Pang Zhonghua's TV program has been repeatedly broadcast on CCTV for 5 years, which has brought him huge popularity.
In 1993, he was elected as a member of the 8th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the founding chairman and legal representative of the China Hard Pen Calligraphy Association.
He put forward the loud slogan of "writing beautiful Chinese characters and being an upright Chinese" to Chinese people all over the world, and he himself was the most loyal practitioner of this slogan.
He is known as "the first person in Chinese hard pen calligraphy" and "the king of hard pen calligraphy", and is also an idol in the hearts of hundreds of millions of Chinese teenagers.
But Pang Zhonghua has not always stood at the pinnacle of success, and great success has followed controversy.
Since the 90s, a large number of young calligraphers have sprung up.
His works have been questioned, and some people say that his hard pen characters are mainly taken from Yan Liu, which belongs to the beauty of the pavilion body, but it is easy to have an unstable center of gravity. The structure is neither dangerous nor handsome, and his characters are short and of average stature.
It is also said that writing is originally a symbol of language, and there is no need to overly mystify and elitist the art of calligraphy, which is not of much benefit to society.
In the face of these controversies, Pang Zhonghua said that this is a good motivation for him, constantly promoting his own progress, he will accept kind criticism, malicious attacks will laugh it off, and will answer them with results.
Pang Zhonghua is working hard towards his new goal in a down-to-earth manner, he wants to let all Chinese children learn calligraphy happily, and he wants to promote Chinese character literature to the world, so that the whole world can see the charm of Chinese culture.
In the past ten years, with the popularization of computers and the promotion of paperless office, Pang Zhonghua has gradually faded out of public view, but he has not been idle and continues to silently promote hard-pen calligraphy education.
He believes that calligraphy is the essence of Chinese culture, and cultural inheritance should start from the doll.
In recent years, he has devoted more energy to calligraphy education in primary and secondary schools, especially the training of teachers. In cooperation with the education departments of various cities, districts and counties, teacher training courses have been organized, and books have been published to help train teachers of calligraphy with a hard pen.
Teachers are trained to write and speak, and then they pass on the knowledge to the children.
Pang Zhonghua also brought hard-pen calligraphy overseas, setting off a wave of learning to write Chinese overseas.
Since September 2011, he has been lecturing at prestigious universities such as Harvard University, Columbia University, and Princeton University, and has been widely acclaimed.
In April 2012, the three-month Pang Zhonghua calligraphy class was held at the United Nations as scheduled.
He began teaching calligraphy to diplomats from 18 countries. In order to let foreigners who do not understand Chinese learn Chinese characters, he uses music teaching methods to match the rhythm of songs.
For example, if you write a horizontal drawing, you can say that it is a three-beat rhythm, a little lower stroke, move the pen to the right, and a beat of one, two, three.
He also used songs from different countries to teach, and when everyone heard the songs they were familiar with and wrote to the rhythm, they quickly memorized the strokes of Chinese characters. Pang Zhonghua described this as "which slope to sing which song".
During the opening of the United Nations, there were one class per week, and hundreds of people attended each class.
At the end of the course, Mr. Nam Wai Zhe, an assistant to Ban Ki-moon and Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony and delivered a speech, presenting certificates to each participant.
Pang Zhonghua has made great contributions to the world stage of Chinese calligraphy.
In 2021, Pang Zhonghua was invited to become a distinguished professor at the Open University of China, and he plans to travel all over China through online and offline teaching, giving speeches and demonstrations directly to the audience.
He began to learn live Xi live broadcast in his old age, and tried to hold his first online class on October 18, 21, saying that he wanted to use the power of the Internet to spread our own knowledge of Chinese character writing on the land of China.
"Be an upright Chinese, write beautiful and bright Chinese characters, hold a red and fiery Chinese heart, and do real Chinese things." We must keep in mind the excellent traditional Chinese cultural classics!" This is Pang Zhonghua's original intention to promote hard-pen calligraphy, and it is also what he has done all his life.
To this day, regardless of whether the Ponzi font is still revered, Pang Zhonghua itself has become a symbol of the times, he is a pioneer of Chinese hard-pen calligraphy, and a dazzling star in the history of Chinese calligraphy.
As netizens in the comment area said, his spirit of persistence, perseverance, self-discipline and innovation is worth learning from every one of us Xi
We will always remember that passionate era led us to find the joy of writing and experience the profound Chinese culture.
I wish Mr. Pang good health, and may our calligraphy art go to the world and let the world appreciate the beauty of Chinese culture.
Source: WeChat public account "Franklin Book Club"
Author: Fu Shu Fu Shu
Editor: Pan Xi
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