A Primer on Writing Chinese

[adichew]

Thanks for all the replies, which are very helpful. I will scan in a sample of my writing when I have time and access to my scanner.

 

Btw, is the parker51(F) good for writing Chinese? And are there Pilot/Namiki pens (not vanishing pt) which are S$50-200 that might fit both this criteria and general school use?

 

Thx.

 

Adi

[wykpenguin]

With a budget of $200, you can get anything. The Namiki Falcon is just $170 and I got my VP for $115.

 

Any fine nib will be good. I don't believe that there was ever a modern FP that left the factory scratchy (probably with the exception of those from MB). A wet fine will be nice to have because a dry fine might skip (I can get my VP to skip if I write fast enough). Usually nibs with proper feeds (i.e. not VP) have better behaved flow since some ink is stored in the feed close to the nib. Depending on your preference, you may or may not find the nail point of the flighters comfortable. Personally I like FPs with springy nibs springier the better.

 

Another consideration is weight. Some people like light, so people like heavy but well balanced. You need to go to pen shops to try out a few pens and find out your preference. Pelikans and flighters are on the light side, while the VP is one of the heavier pens. Any pen that has a shiny metal barrel is most likely heavy.

 

You might also want a pen that has a larger ink capacity, though the ability to use cartridges might be life saving in the event that you do run out of ink. Imagine a piston filler running dry because you forgot to top it up at home. Are you prepared to take out an ink bottle in class and fill you pen?? With a cartridge/converter pen, I put in refilled cartridges for normal use and take a spare cartridge. If my refilled cartridge does run out, I pop in the new one. That said, even the smallest of cartridges last well over 10 pages. My M205 with an M nib has ink to write for more than a week!

 

Depending on how you abuse it in "general school use", you might want to get a cheaper pen. The main danger being loosing it. Speaking of abuse, I confess that my VP rides in my pants pocket (yes, I hear fellow FPNers condemning me) daily. IMO, any pen will be good for daily use unless it weighs a tonne and has diamonds on it, which no <$200 pen has. I mean, look carefully, you probably have 5 cheap BPs banging into each other in you pencil case, as far as function is concerned they still write as perfectly as a BP can, so why would a FP which will spend most of its time alone in a pocket need to be tougher?

 

The traditional recommendations would be Pelikan M400, Lamy's and Parker Flighters.

 

p.s. why not a VP?

[Getsurin]

Have you tried Hero pens? They are fantastic writers for Chinese characters - especially the Hero 100 (which I hv a few). They are fine enough for multiple strokes characters. Platinum pens in F nib produce very consistent and fine smooth lines too.

Edited February 28, 2009 by Getsurin

[Dr.Grace]

A Parker 51 would be great. The Hero 100 is also a great pen for the price, especially with smooth paper, but for rough paper the nib might be too fine. The Pilot Custom 74, a terrific pen, is also in your price range; I'd get an M nib, equivalent to a Western F or MF.

[graceaj]

Thanks for all the replies, which are very helpful. I will scan in a sample of my writing when I have time and access to my scanner.

 

Btw, is the parker51(F) good for writing Chinese? And are there Pilot/Namiki pens (not vanishing pt) which are S$50-200 that might fit both this criteria and general school use?

 

Thx.

 

Adi

 

As said, you may want to consider a Pilot M nib. In this case, you could consider an inexpensive Pilot from Mustafa (Birdie, Tank Eyedropper or the other converter one), or a Pilot Prera or Knight. You should be able to fine the Prera/Knight at Kinokuniya or NBC.

[Prise]

Thanks for the primer, very well done.

 

I've particular enjoyed this thread, since it brings back fond memories of writing the characters with the old brush pen during caligraphy class in Chinese school.

 

Which pens or nibs do you guys find writes best with chinese characters, especially ones that can vary the strokes?

 

Kind regards,

 

P.

[Dr.Grace]

My favorites, in order of price from low to high:

 

1. Zebra superfine brush pen

 

at Jetpens

 

Amazing line variation and fine enough for everyday writing. Drawback: not refillable, black only. This is the closest thing to an actual brush. The fountain pens listed below can do most strokes, but have a harder time with the "orchid" stroke, i.e. the right half of the word 人 ("ren2" ) and the "dian3" or teardrop stroke.

 

2. Sailor "Special Script" or "SuperScript" pen. You can get them on eBay and various other places. Works pretty well for a relatively inexpensive steel-nibbed fp, and it's c/c refillable. Hero also makes pens with bent nibs like this.

 

3. Richard Binder "Condor" nib, with Pelikan M2xx or above. This is a really fun pen to use, and has the quality of Pelikan and Binder.

 

4. I also have a Sailor Concord, which the "Condor" nib is patterned after. But the Condor is actually better than the Concord, IMO. The Sailor nib is too broad for normal writing. As a signature pen, it might be what you're looking for, but for normal writing it feels bulky and clumsy. I'm going to send mine to Michael Matsuyama for regrinding.

 

I haven't tried the Sailor Fude nib, but that's another expensive option that's an upscale version of the "special script".

[publius]

There are many people who write beautifully but cannot speak a word or construct a sentence of Chinese.

Yes, such as most of the population of Japan! :roflmho:

 

Seriously, thank you for the suggestions. Is there a particular text that you would suggest makes good writing practice? I suppose the "Thousand-Character Classic" was the traditional thing to use, but it seems to contain a lot of obsolete characters. It just seems as though copying a single character over & over would be a very tiresome way to practice.

Edited March 1, 2009 by publius

[Dr.Grace]

The "Beginning Chinese Reader" and "Intermediate Chinese Reader" series by John DeFrancis is a little outdated but still great for learning traditional characters, as it includes lots of practice with spaced repetition built in. For simplified characters, I've seen books called something like "New Practical Chinese Reader" that seem pretty good.

[Renzhe]

Yes, such as most of the population of Japan! :roflmho:

I said "beautifully." That excludes the entire population of Japan. j/k!

Is there a particular text that you would suggest makes good writing practice? I suppose the "Thousand-Character Classic" was the traditional thing to use, but it seems to contain a lot of obsolete characters. It just seems as though copying a single character over & over would be a very tiresome way to practice.

 

Indeed, writing the same character over and over is a crappy way to practice. Better is to write something interesting. A popular method is copying classic texts. I wouldn't recommend the Thousand Character Classic, as its language is constrained. For Regular Script, Ouyang Xun's 九成宮醴泉銘 is popular. Here is a page of a copy.

http://i41.tinypic.com/mcx6wg.jpg

 

Along with Ouyang Xun, popular Regular Script calligraphers include Yan Zhenqing, Liu Gongquan, and Zhao Mengfu.

 

One can view samples of their and others' calligraphy here.

[professionaldilettante]

it's true about what others have said, that even though english is phonetic, we don't read letter by letter. Have you ever gotten the emails where either the all the letters in each word are scrambled except the first and last letter? or haven't you gotten ones that have all of the vowels taken out of it? it's the same concept that while the words are messed up and schouln't make any sense what so ever, we can sitll raed tehm by recognizing th shps f th wrds thmslvs. the same with chinese too, by understanding the appearance of the word as a whole, you can read it.

[wykpenguin]

<!--quoteo(post=956859:date=Mar 1 2009, 01:23 PM:name=publius)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (publius @ Mar 1 2009, 01:23 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=956859"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Yes, such as most of the population of Japan! <img src="https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/roflmho.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":roflmho:" border="0" alt="roflmho.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I said "beautifully." That excludes the entire population of Japan. <b>j/k!</b>

<!--quoteo(post=956859:date=Mar 1 2009, 01:23 PM:name=publius)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (publius @ Mar 1 2009, 01:23 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=956859"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Is there a particular text that you would suggest makes good writing practice? I suppose the "Thousand-Character Classic" was the traditional thing to use, but it seems to contain a lot of obsolete characters. It just seems as though copying a single character over & over would be a very tiresome way to practice.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

 

Indeed, writing the same character over and over is a crappy way to practice. Better is to write something interesting. A popular method is copying classic texts. I wouldn't recommend the Thousand Character Classic, as its language is constrained. For Regular Script, Ouyang Xun's 九成宮醴泉銘 is popular. Here is a page of a copy.

<img src="http://i41.tinypic.com/mcx6wg.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />

 

Along with Ouyang Xun, popular Regular Script calligraphers include Yan Zhenqing, Liu Gongquan, and Zhao Mengfu.

 

One can view samples of their and others' calligraphy <a href="http://www.chinapage.com/callig1.html" target="_blank">here</a>.

 

It's the same as practicing Western calligraphy, you can't do it letter by letter, perhaps you can manage to get some results word by word, but for real progress, nothing beats writing paragraphs.

 

I also try to remind myself that the "Chinese calligraphy" we see now was just the handwriting of those ancient "calligraphers" who used the brush to write every day. Apart from painstakingly copying the form of the characters to perfection, I also try to write naturally and create a flow in a piece.

[leprechaun]

The "Beginning Chinese Reader" and "Intermediate Chinese Reader" series by John DeFrancis is a little outdated but still great for learning traditional characters, as it includes lots of practice with spaced repetition built in. For simplified characters, I've seen books called something like "New Practical Chinese Reader" that seem pretty good.

I have been using NCPR (New Practical Chinese Reader) and I find it to be excellent. It is claimed on certain forums that the grammar explanations are a bit "lean" but one could always reference another source for further explanation. Also recommended is the Boya series of books or Integrated Chinese, but as I had already made my choice, I have no experience with either.

 

I've heard it said that people spend too much time and effort looking for the "perfect textbook" when they should just sit down with a good one and commence learning.

[Parse Error]

although honestly... my Chinese is absolutely horrible when I decide to go on a sloppy style. It's still readable, but people constantly complain about bad penmanship.

 

Also, use a wetter pen while writing with chaoshu (semicursive or cursive) and a drier pen while writing zhenti (or straight printing). With cursive it's designed to go quick -- VERY quick and I noticed that usually some of my pens can't keep up with the pace. On the other hand, when you straight print, you spend a lot of time on each particular stroke, so you're going to want a drier pen so you don't destroy your paper in the process. And like all writing habits, please don't rest any part of the pen on the paper -- that's only for oil ballpoint pen users only.

 

Usually, the pen flick is done by starting out slow and then swiping the pen across the paper to form the line and then off to stop. For Writing Chinese if I ever feel the need to flick, it looks particularly bad.

 

True Chinese cursive is completely illegible to the average person -- only old doctors and calligraphers still use it for the most part. (I'll post up writing samples later to show my bad hand)

[hlyuqi]

哇 ..我来支持一下。汉字最高~ 哈哈

[MBxeno]

Super guide. Will give this a try when I have the time

[Halligator]

Don't forget that you can read Chinese (1) Right to left, along a horizontal line of characters, then on to the next lower r to l line; (2) Left to right, along a horizontal line of characters, then drop to the next lower l to r line; (3) Top to bottom along a vertical column of characters, then progressing to the next column, moving from left to right; (4) Top to bottom along a vertical column of characters, then progressing to the next column, from right to left.

 

(I've never seen anything printed or written bottom to top, in either direction. Not saying someone hasn't done it, just that I've never seen it!)

 

I was surprised that it's not as confusing to read Chinese as I had feared. Once you figure the direction of printing or writing, just keep moving!

 

Arthur

[jiraltan]

I think Chinese is not that hard to read from right to left just because you're concentrating on the meaning of each individual character and not so much making sounds into words. It's a bit harder reading pre-WWII Japanese.

 

I've noticed that for some reason, even in Mainland China where they have mostly stopped writing vertically and writing from right to left, that signs on buses and cars still tend to go from right to left.