On the short video platform, there is a 79-year-old uncle who has gained more than 900,000 fans through online comments on calligraphy works sent by netizens. This master is not an ordinary person, his name may not be familiar to young people, but it is a well-known figure in the calligraphy world. He is one of the founders of the Chinese Calligraphy Association, Yang Zaichun.
Born in 1943, Yang Zaichun went to the Beijing Institute of Physical Education, the predecessor of Peking University, to study preparatory courses in the 1960s because of his athletic expertise, and then he became a professional athlete in the long jump and triple jump, and the photos of his youth can see a style of athletes. However, his father was a man of letters, graduated from Waseda University in Tokyo, and returned to Japan to become a Japanese language teacher. Influenced by his father, he had a special love for calligraphy from an early age.
After arriving in Beijing, he learned that there was a museum in Beijing, which contained many authentic calligraphy. So when he had time, he took a pen, ink and paper, rode on a bicycle borrowed from the coach, and ran there to copy it. Once, when he was copying, the ink on the ground was kicked over by tourists, and the ink spilled on the gold bricks of hundreds of years and could not be erased.
It was a big winter, he was scared into a cold sweat, picked up a rag and quickly wiped it, but he couldn't wipe it off, and seeing that the golden bell of four or five hundred years was about to be destroyed, he couldn't afford it. An old gentleman suddenly appeared next to him and told the staff at the scene that this young man worked hard and could see him every time he came, this was the ink that others kicked over, not his fault, which helped him break the siege. Yin and yang were wrong, and Yang Zaichun became acquainted with this old gentleman. This was his enlightenment teacher, Huang Gaohan.
In the 1970s and 1980s, he ushered in the peak of his calligraphy career, and CCTV asked him to do calligraphy explanation videos on television, a series of programs that lasted for three years, and his program became the most concerned and highly rated traditional cultural program at that time. Through the east wind of television programs, he published 15 million calligraphy education books.
After bidding farewell to CCTV, he is still engaged in calligraphy and calligraphy education. The rise of short video platforms has allowed him to seize the traffic password again and ushered in the "old trees and springs" in his career. He put the teaching process of guiding students across the country in calligraphy creation to the short video platform. This innovative interactive way of calligraphy teaching has been well received by netizens. Many old calligraphy enthusiasts who have regarded him as an idol for more than ten or twenty years have been given the opportunity to get close to him. This allowed Yang Zaichun to gain more than 900,000 fans. Netizens joked that Yang Zaichun's name was good, and Yang Lao's spring was really spring again.
Legend has it that practicing calligraphy makes people live longer, and this view is confirmed by Yang Zaichun. Every few days, Mr. Yang's calligraphy video will be updated. In the video, Mr. Yang's voice is loud and his face is rosy, not at all like the appearance of an old man in his 80s, but he has a bit of a face collision with Lin Ruiyang, a Taiwanese star in his 60s. Young people who do not understand Yang Zaichun sometimes brush the video and mistakenly think that Lin Ruiyang is teaching calligraphy.
Here, I wish Mr. Yang Lao, health and longevity, and a smooth career, and I also hope that his story can encourage more young people to insist on learning traditional Chinese calligraphy culture.