Plaques are unique cultural symbols formed based on the art of calligraphy, integrating practicality and artistry. They are widely hung in conspicuous locations in various buildings such as palaces, temples, archways, businesses, places of interest, etc. The building is a symbol of cultural taste and a reflection of the commercial attributes of the building, conveying information on culture, identity, interest, business and many other aspects to people.
Inscribing a plaque has two major purposes. One is to show the cultural taste of the owner of the plaque, and the other is to provide long-term promotion to the inscriber. Therefore, from ancient times to the present, inviting celebrities to inscribe plaques is a matter of great joy to everyone. The owner of the plaque gained elegance, and the inscriber gained publicity and even the opportunity to leave his name in history.
Although there are no clear regulations on who should inscribe what plaque, there are still some established rules in the plaque culture. People are taboo about inscriptions that cross the boundary, especially those places related to the cultural industry, which attach great importance to inscriptions. The plaques used to identify the author are often inscribed by cultural celebrities. For example, the plaques hanging on the lintels of China Bookstore, the Palace Museum, the Shenyang Forbidden City, Rongbaozhai and other places were all written by the great modern writer Guo Moruo. Deyunshe
Plaques are used in all walks of life in modern society and still continue the traditional practice of the predecessors.
Crosstalk is a unique rap art in my country. It uses speaking, learning, teasing and singing as performance forms. It was formed around the Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty. The birthplaces of my country's northern crosstalk are Beijing and Tianjin. To this day, These two places have formed a strong cultural atmosphere of cross talk, and many cross talk societies have been born.
Among them, the "Deyun Society", founded in 1995, is undoubtedly one of the most influential cross talk societies in my country. Its success today is inseparable from Guo Degang, one of the founders. unremitting efforts and great contributions. The original name of Deyun Society was "Beijing Crosstalk Conference". It was renamed "Deyun Society" in 2003 and has been used to this day.
When crosstalk artists choose names, there is a long-standing rule. They like to arrange their seniority according to the characters in the name of the leader. For example, many crosstalk artists were born in the 1930s and 1940s. For the "literary" generation, representatives include Su Wenmao, Zhang Wenshun, Wei Wenliang, Hou Yaowen and others. Guo Degang and others belong to the young "virtue" generation of crosstalk artists. Guo Degang
Shortly after the name of "Deyun Club" was changed, in October 2004, 27-year-old Guo Degang became a disciple of Hou Yaowen, an older generation cross talk master, in order to revitalize the art of cross talk. It can be said that Guo Degang's achievements today are inseparable from Hou Yaowen's careful cultivation.
In order to express respect for his mentor, Guo Degang invited his mentor to inscribe a plaque for "Deyun Society" not long after he became a disciple. After the plaque was made, Guo Degang regarded it as a treasure and immediately hung it on the lintel of Deyun Society. It has not been replaced until now.
It can be seen that the order of the strokes of the word "德" in the three characters "Deyunshe" is wrong, and it is suspected of being a typo.
The word "德" has a left-right structure. The left side is the double side, which is similar to the Chinese character "彳". The right side is from top to bottom: ten, four, one, and heart.
When Hou Yaowen was writing, he changed the positions of the "four" and "one" on the right side of the word "德". Finally, he changed the word "十" into the word "士", leaving the word "心" on the top One horizontal line is missing and it becomes a variant character. Various ways of writing the word "virtue"
Is there anything wrong with the word "virtue"? If we look at the stroke rules and evaluation criteria of regular script, this character is undoubtedly a typo.
If judged by the standards of calligraphy art, whether this character is correct or not is relatively unclear. This is because in running script, cursive script, and even seal cutting creations, artists often add, subtract, or appropriate the strokes of certain fonts in order to create the coordination and beauty of the fonts.
The strokes in some parts of the font are too complicated. If written out in full, it will look crowded and messy, making the center of gravity of the font unstable. Therefore, calligraphers will write a few fewer strokes in this part to make the words appear as a whole. become more symmetrical.
The partial strokes of some fonts are too sparse, which is also not conducive to layout. Therefore, some strokes will be added during writing, or strokes from other parts will be used to make the fonts look different in detail from the original ones. The same, but the overall effect does not affect the artistic value.
However, in calligraphy creation, the characters that can add, subtract and appropriate strokes are all characters with a special structure and shape. These characters have a very unusual combination of left and right, up and down, inside and outside stroke structures. Uniform and written according to normal rules, it will not be able to reflect the unique beauty of visual art, such as "忀", "鲁", "昖" and other words. If you stick to the rules and write them, it will not be easy for a brilliant calligrapher to write them well. At this time, the beauty of shape and structure can only be reflected by adding, subtracting, and misappropriating strokes.
So, does the word "德" also need to add, subtract and appropriate strokes?
No need, because the word "virtue" is not that complicated yet.
Moreover, when looking at the inscriptions handed down from ancient times, there has never been a situation where the word "德" is written like Hou Yaowen did. It can be said that this is a typo, not even a variant or a Tongjia character. However, in some official script and regular script scripts, the word "德" is often omitted and the horizontal line between "四" and "心" on the right half is often omitted. This writing method was used for more than 300 years from the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties to the Sui Dynasty. Relatively common. Members of Deyun Society
Over the past 300 years, it was a period of transition for Chinese characters from official script to regular script. The number of strokes of some Chinese characters has not been fixed. Therefore, the same Chinese characters will have different writing styles in different regions. The difference is reflected in specific characters, either more strokes or fewer strokes. This is determined by the specific evolutionary history of Chinese characters.
Modern calligraphers can copy according to the writing method of the copybook when making copies, but when creating, they must write according to the existing Chinese character stroke standards. This is respect for Chinese characters.
Through the above analysis, we know that there are only three possibilities for Hou Yaowen to write the word "virtue" like that.
First, Hou Yaowen memorized the strokes of the word "德" wrongly and wrote the word "virtue" by mistake.
This assumption is very likely. Hou Yaowen was born in 1948. When he was reading and literacy, he happened to catch up with the early stage of "simplification of traditional Chinese characters" and "national literacy". At that time, there were many illiterates in the country and the literacy rate was very low. Low. Many people cannot write. Even if they learn some words, they may not understand the stroke sequence clearly. When he developed a habit of writing the word "德" in the wrong way, it was difficult to correct it. He always thought that what he wrote was correct, and today's clerical error occurred. The word "virtue" was missing one stroke
Secondly, Hou Yaowen deliberately wrote the word "virtue" wrongly, trying to give Guo Degang some hints.
As an older generation artist with both virtue and art, Hou Yaowen wants to use this method to hint to his disciples that "morality" comes first in being a human being and that he can convince others with virtue. Such artists are great artists.
Of course, what Hou Yaowen wanted to hint to his disciples was not revealed to the outside world afterwards, so we can only guess.
Thirdly, Hou Yaowen deliberately made typos in order to leave some talking points for future generations and let history remember him.
There are many such examples in history. For example, during the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, there was a little-known scholar Qian Zilong who could write good calligraphy. Due to a moment of negligence, when he wrote "Quan Ju De", he changed the word "De" to "Quan Ju De". "" The word was missing, but I didn't expect that his name would go down in history because of this plaque, and it is still talked about by people.