Finally rolling to a stop on the China portion of our world culture tour, we decided to try our hand at calligraphy. Watching movies such as Jet Li's Hero, you'll see how important calligraphy is to Chinese culture.
Calligraphy, which translates to "beautiful writing", isn't just a form of communication in China, it is also considered an art.
Writing Chinese letters with calligraphy is kind of hard! However, even our amateur efforts turned out kind of pretty. The boys definitely had fun writing out words at least.
First we had to come up with what to write. One of my sons decided on the phrase "fur babies" in honor of our dogs. I went to Google translate.
When arriving at the site, I first had to decide WHICH Chinese I wanted, simplified or traditional. Not being entirely certain the difference, I figured calligraphy newbies like my boys and me needed the simplified version.
Searching "fur babies" in English, translated to Chinese as 毛皮婴儿
As we painted our simplified Chinese letters, we decided the letters looked better if you did each line in quick, full strokes rather than little by little. It looked smoother. It looked more official.
So, end result? Not sure if a Chinese person could read it or not, but if was fun trying!
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