What does Chinese calligraphy or poetry have to do with Qi Gong or Tai Chi?
Most people know that China is one of oldest world civilizations, what people don’t know is that illiteracy was more than 60 % of the Chinese population before 1949. Almost everyone can read or write in China today, but what most people read or write is the modernized Chinese. The discrepancy between Modern Chinese and Classical Chinese and poetry is greater than that of modern American English and Shakespeare. There are great distinctions between Writing and Calligraphy, Modern Chinese and Classical Chinese. While writing (with a pen) in modern Chinese represents the idea of merging with the Western world of knowledge, technology, and ideology, calligraphy (with a brush in classical Chinese) represents the old world of cultural practices and spiritual traditions, which were all documented in Classical Chinese or poetry form. Calligraphy or Classical Chinese has never been accessible to every Chinese native. For the Chinese native students in the Ph. D programs of East Asian Studies at
