|
The
Plano
Asian Festival committee has been sponsoring my booth at the Plano
Haggard Park every year since 2007. On
May 5, we appeared on Good Morning Texas
to promote the annual Plano Asian Festival. Each year at Haggard Park,
we have Plano Asian Festival on the first Saturday of May and Plano
International Festival in October. The purpose of setting our booth
today is to bring more people to the Plano Asian Festival in May. The
President of PAF, Dr. Jian Li, has also sponsored several
events at the Courtyard Theater for the Dallas Chinese Calligraphy and
Painting Association
after I became the president in January 2015. I told them that the
committee of PAF has all nice people from different Asian countries and
they work cooperatively for the same goal to promote and share Asian
cultures and arts. Today
I wrote eight words on a scroll for Jian. She is currently teaching
children Mandarin at an American school. The eight words are slogans
typically seen in many schools of China: Learn really well; make
progress every day. When I was writing on this scroll, the Wing Chun
instructor was playing with Stephen Lee and they hit my table brutally.
Luckily, they did not spoil my paper with ink. Stephen was born in a
Tsai Li Fu (Choy Li Fut 蔡李佛)
family and they practice that martial arts system for generations. When
Jimmy K. Wong hosts martial arts competitions in Dallas, Stephen is the
host to those martial artists from other states and countries. He has
wide connections with people in Hong Kong including Jackie Chan, Sammo
Hung, Leung Ting, and many others. Stephen is also a founding
member/advisor/contributor of the Dallas Chinese Calligraphy and
Painting Association. He ran the first Dim Sum restaurant in Dallas. As
mentioned elsewhere, whenever I demostrate calligraphy in public, there
are always distractions: noises, wind, rain, loud speakers, interrupted
writing and conversation, and even people hitting the table. Imagine if
your masterly written calligraphy were to be spoiled half way of the
writing, what would you feel? As a believer of Calligraphy
is the Mind Image,
I always wish people can respect others when others are giving a speech,
a concert, or a demonstration by keeping silence and not causing
distractions. When people request their names to be written phonetically
in Chinese calligraphy, I tell them if you prefer higher artistic
quality of my calligraphy you better be silent, not moving, and not
chatting with phones. For people who do not practice art, usually they
do not know artists work with many levels of consciousness and
subconsciousness. Artistic mental calculations can be very complex and
instantaneous. When the mental design or inspiration is gone in a flash,
most of the time you cannot duplicate it, especially for cursive styles
of Chinese calligraphy. 
|
