The Luckiest Day Ever

I had quite a surprise yesterday while studying at a coffee shop. I was on the University campus, in a coffee shop attached to the University book store, when the barista started asking me about my Chinese studies. Yesterday was the University's anniversary/ birthday so there were celebrations going on and no class. The barista told me that upstairs, in the very building in which I was drinking coffee, were a group of famous Chinese calligraphy masters who came on this one day only to do free calligraphy for anyone who requested it! I went upstairs and lo, there were about 6 old men all with big calligraphgy brushes and bowls of black or orange ink. They were writing the requested messages, of varying length, on various sizes of rice paper. I gravitated toward the man writing on the biggest pieces of paper, writing with the biggest brush, and asked him to write "peace" for me, which looks like 和平. Now look at the result!


(Click for big)

In olden times, characters were read from right to left, so on the left you can clearly see the stylized "平", but what about the 和 you ask? Well it turns out that the old, old version of 和 is much more complex and half of it was replaced with the 口. My scroll has the old version :)

I've learned a very valuable lesson from this experience. I'm NEVER going ANYWHERE without my camera AGAIN! Mark my words! Wait, have I said that before...?