Some days ago I went to a friend's home. His father is a scholar and have a wide ken on many fields. He mentioned the calligraphy of Mao Zedong and song high praise on it. He wandered how Mao Zedong could get so high achievements on so many different fields. I told him that in many Chinese arts, people always think that the skill isn't the most important, but what a person you are at last decides what a level your works can acheive.
It's an idea I learned from Su Shi, the smart and gifted guy who was famous on his essay, poem, drawing, calligrapgy, cooking, handcraft and all other things you can image. He said," if you wanted to talk me with the poem, I'll say that the secret of the poem isn't in the poem." Someone's handwriting is good and someone's is bad. But in China a nice handwriting is still far away from a good calligraphy. By the basic theory of Chinese arts, a works at least should tell what a person you are. It looks easy because now we always think our handwriting show out some of our characters and many books tell about that. But calligraphy at last is a kind of art, so above it, it still need a hard training to get the skill. It's a technology outside to show a character inside. So there wasn't and won't be a real calligraphy artist is short of either the skill or the culture. In Song Dynasty (960-1279), there were some great calligraphy artists. The later generations call the best four "the Four of Song". But "the Four of Song" is already not the origional four. There was one of the origional four called Cai Jing. He was the premier minister of Song Huizong, a talent artist but a bad emperor, but he is a evil officer. So although his calligraphy was so good, people kicked him out of the great masters of the artists but count into his sinless nephew Cai Xiang. So today when we mention "the Four of Song" as "Su Huang Mi Cai", the four last names of the four artists, the "Cai" is not Cai Jing any more, it's stand for Cai Xiang.
