A Czech designer's passion for calligraphy

(China Daily)

Updated: 2016-08-24

A Czech designer's passion for calligraphy

Jana Janeckova, the owner of Listdesign, a graphic design company in the Czech Republic, still rememberes the movie about Chinese calligraphy screened in Czech when she was a child.

According to her, calligraphy is so great that the movie was not simply about art, but even put forward some kind of religion.

"You need to hold your breath, focus, free your mind and relax, then you can express," Janeckova recalls.

Among the dexterous switches of the strokes, a completely alien culture unfolded in front of Janeckova's very eyes, giving her that first glimpse at the country in the Far East.

About two years ago, Janeckova eventually set foot on the land of the country she had seen only in the movies, as she moved with her husband and two daughters to Beijing, capital of China. It was there that her interest in calligraphy really took off.

"A French neighbor introduced me to a calligraphy teacher so that I could learn the art for two hours every Wednesday. I think it's a good way to learn about Chinese culture."

Accompanied by her daughter's piano, from which the soundtrack of "Forrest Gump" resonates through the apartment, Janeckova holds a brush and fills the rice paper with cursive script, a highly skilled art in calligraphy which requires a person's impeccable command of Chinese characters, especially the traditional ones. Although Janeckova only copied her teacher's style, her progress is astonishing.

"She's really a quick learner," said He Wenzheng, a contracted painter from the Art Academy of Loong Artery Millennium (Longmai Qianxi).

A graphic designer herself, Janeckova explains how she has a good visual memory so it hasn't been too hard to remember the order of the strokes.

Starting to learn Chinese five times a week after her arrival in Beijing, Janeckova will soon take HSK 4 (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi 4 -- Level 4 Test for Chinese Proficiency). Already having a good command of other European languages such as English and German, Janeckova said learning Chinese is quite different from studying Western languages.

"If the European languages are two dimensional pictures, then the Chinese is a three dimensional one; there are no similarities between Czech and Chinese and we learn it like a new-born baby," said Janeckova.

Yet the Czech designer also discovered that there logic and rules are at play inside the hieroglyphic language. "Chinese says tomorrow as 'mingtian,' a bright day with hope, and tomato as ‘xihongshi' (western red fruit)."

According to her, learning Chinese is not simply a matter of memorizing characters, but of remembering the history, stories, legends and culture beyond the written words.

"It was not until I read the book about Laozi did I realize I was a Taoist," she said.

 

According to Janeckova, as China is playing an increasingly important role in the international community in regard of its fast-growing economy, Europeans consider Chinese a valuable language.

Just consider the population of Beijing which is twice as many as that of Czech, people can understand how huge the market potential is, said the designer, who graduated in marketing and public relations with a master's degree from a Prague university.

Apart from economic relations, Janeckova believes the two countries also have something else in common. People of her generation in Czech, a country where the contact lens and lightning rods in Europe were invented, also wore red scarves, a popular communist youth league signal of the past, when they were young.

Although Janeckova hopes to establish economic ties between her company and the Chinese market, she adds that her purpose to learn Chinese and calligraphy is not only that of marketing.

Janeckova enjoys watching people exercising or writing calligraphy with water on the ground in the city's parks.

People may think they can be happy when they are flaunting their expensive cars, she concludes, however, that they are wrong. According to Janeckova, she'd rather pick up the tranquil lifestyle of practicing calligraphy on the ground as those people do in the parks because "that's the happiness which wealth cannot bring."

What we do

SAFEA is responsible for certifying foreign experts to work in the Chinese mainland and organizing overseas training for Chinese technical and managerial professionals.

 

All Rights Reserved Sponsored by State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs Powered by China Daily
京ICP备05011597号