<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote">Forwarded From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Fierman, William</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:wfierman@indiana.edu">wfierman@indiana.edu</a>></span><br>Date: Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 1:39 PM<br><br><br><br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Line Drawn on Purported Corruption in Calligraphy<u></u><u></u></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">By
<a href="http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/author/chris-buckley/" title="More Posts by Chris Buckley" target="_blank">
<span style="color:blue">Chris Buckley</span></a> <u></u><u></u></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">January 21, 2015 3:10 am January 21, 2015 3:10 am<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Photo<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><img src="cid:image001.jpg@01D0357F.B4F5C9F0" alt="Examining calligraphy set for auction in Hong Kong. On the mainland, the head of the Communist Party’s main antigraft agency says crooked officials are accepting high fees for shoddy works." height="394" width="592" border="0"></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Examining calligraphy set for auction in Hong Kong. On the mainland, the head of the Communist Party’s main antigraft agency says crooked officials are accepting high
fees for shoddy works.Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Photo<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><img src="cid:image002.jpg@01D0357F.B4F5C9F0" alt="Wang Qishan." height="266" width="190" border="0"></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Wang Qishan.Credit Feng Li/Getty Images<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">In Chinese culture, calligraphy holds a hallowed status. In ancient times, emperors, mandarins and poets prized
the skill of using ink and a brush to render words, texts and poems on paper with such vigor and grace that the complex characters of written Chinese become an art form of their own.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">But in today’s China, not even this austere hobby has escaped the tentacles of corruption. To judge from warnings
by Communist Party officials, the calligraphy racket can be as sordid and ruthless as a rigged wrestling match.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The problem has come under discussion since Wang Qishan, the head of the party’s antigraft agency, the Central
Commission for Discipline Inspection, warned that calligraphic corruption was in his sights. Presenting himself as both a graft-buster and a connoisseur, Mr. Wang suggested that crooked officials were passing off their scrawlings as valuable masterpieces and
dared to present themselves as masters of the difficult “cursive” script.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“Some leading officials can’t even write regular script properly, and still they rush straight into cursive,
and then dare mount it to give others,” Mr. Wang said in a speech in mid-January, according to a report
<a href="http://www.ccdi.gov.cn/yw/201501/t20150116_50191.html" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue">issued by his agency on Friday</span></a>. “They’ve forgotten the bond between the ruling party and ordinary folks.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Even before Mr. Wang’s comments, calligraphic associations had joined the public lineup of shady operations
suspected of aiding official corruption, together with property developers and seedy hotel operators. In People’s Daily, the party’s chief newspaper, a former official turned calligrapher said
<a href="http://cpc.people.com.cn/pinglun/n/2014/1202/c78779-26131622.html" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue">in early December</span></a> that too many retired officials were shoving their way to the leadership of calligraphy and painting associations in a bid for
prestige and illicit wealth. Since then, other insiders have claimed that officials have accepted exorbitant payments for their calligraphy, and party newspapers have urged former officials to give up their posts on calligraphic associations.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“As soon as they can hang out the title of an association chairman, the value of their works rockets,” said
a commentary issued by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection <a href="http://www.ccdi.gov.cn/yw/201501/t20150120_50374.html" target="_blank">
<span style="color:blue">on its website on Tuesday</span></a>. “Leading officials shouldn’t steal meat from the bowls of artists.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Not that calligraphy has ever been insulated from political power in China. It was the art of emperors, and
Mao Zedong prided himself on his poetry and mastery of the bold curves and strokes of cursive script. He and other later leaders dotted the country with their inscriptions. Just as surely, though, those inscriptions would disappear when officials lost in power
struggles.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Even as the party attempts to cleanse calligraphy of corruption, the bonds with politics will stay. After President
Xi Jinping laid out his highly traditionalist view of art and culture in October last year, the China Calligraphers Association joined other state-run artistic associations in acclaiming his views.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“The significance of calligraphy has steadily weakened, and some calligraphers have come under the influence
of Western artistic trends in their creative work,” <a href="http://www.ccagov.com.cn/Detail.aspx?id=41bbea93-9234-4a27-b884-360479967876" target="_blank">
<span style="color:blue">warned Shao Bingren</span></a>, an adviser and former vice president of the association. “To solve these problems, we must grasp and implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speech.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Before his second career in calligraphy, Mr. Shao was a senior party official.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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