"YOU look like a Shaolin Master!" I quip, and artist Tee Ying Jie chuckles in response. Columns of Chinese characters done with a meticulous hand fill up the wall behind him, and he presides over them all like a benevolent Master, dressed in a sombre dark shirt complete with slicked back hair.
There's something inherently deep about the ancient scribal language of Chinese calligraphy. Calligraphy ranked alongside poetry in China as a medium of self-expression and cultivation.
The soft, flexible hairs of the brush, the carbon in the ink and the spontaneity of the movement of the character (letter) portrayed are regarded as the essence or spirit of the calligraphic art.
In China, painting, poetry and calligraphy were the dream team of art and were called the "three perfections".
Discussions about any of them were framed in the same terms: rhythm, touch, tone, spiritual energy. And calligraphers like Tee were adept at each.
Like the masters of old, Tee has delved deep into the ancient artform by channelling his inner Qi to come up with evocative visual works — a discipline he has honed for more than two decades.
But he is quick to dispel his mystical aura.
"My hair has grown out and it's rather long," he admits, raising his hand self-consciously to pat his head. "My last appointment with the barber was in September last year!"
With my Shaolin Master imagery shattered to smithereens, I swiftly move on to more current subjects: Tee's latest art project with Intermark Mall in Kuala Lumpur.
The calligraphy master will be adding his touch to the mall's Chinese New Year decorations. The "Ox-picious Blossoms" at the Intermark Mall is inspired by the grandeur of ancient Chinese arts, especially calligraphy.
More than that, Tee is excited about the Chinese Calligraphy Art Exhibition held at the mall.
With the theme focusing on the Year of the Ox, Tee's 34 artworks will focus on the year's zodiac symbol.
The ox, he tells me, is seen as a source of strength and is greatly valued in Chinese culture.
Many people mistakenly suppose that it is impossible to appreciate calligraphy without knowing the language it represents.
This belief fails to take into account the essentially abstract nature of most great calligraphy, in which the literal meaning of the characters is just one component of the meaning of the image.
The more you know, the more you can get out of a calligraphic text, but there's much for the layman to appreciate.
Even those who do know Chinese are often unable to read major Chinese calligraphic works. But ignorance of languages is no reason to avoid this material. There is much beauty in this often-underrated artform.
Because calligraphy had distant roots in pictographs distilled from natural forms, both writing and painting are thought to be hardwired to nature itself — its energy flowed from the body, through the brush and into the ink.
The resulting strokes and lines are akin to a polygraph read-out of the soul, revealing its moral strengths and exposing its disharmonies.
It emphasises the expression of emotions while being a mental exercise to an artist which coordinates the body and the mind to select the best styling for the presentation of the passage content.
For Tee, the image of the ox brings much meaning to an already tough year for most people.
"The ox represents power, wealth, prosperity, determination and confidence," he explains, adding: "It also takes on positive characteristics, such as being hardworking, loyal and honest."
It has been a challenging year for many because of the pandemic, he acknowledges sombrely. "That is why I made sure my work reflects the positive attributes of the ox and the powerful symbolism behind the second animal of the Chinese zodiac," he says, before continuing: "I want the artwork to depict the ox as guiding Malaysia through a challenging year, leading us into a healthy, prosperous and auspicious 2021."
POWERFUL LANGUAGE
Hopeful words indeed. But the 32-year-old believes that Chinese calligraphy holds more meaning than what meets the eye. And he's happy to school me on the history, the technical subtleties and philosophical complexities that make Chinese calligraphy more than a superbly decorative form of painting.
The Chinese script, known as Oracle Bone Script or Jai Gu Wen, is believed to have started 5,000 years ago as pictographic writing that was evidently expressed on bone and turtle shells.
It was used for shamanistic spiritual rituals where Shang kings would use these objects in important divination rituals.
This early association of writing with ritual and political authority helps to account for the special status conferred upon those who could read and write.
"Over time, writing became a necessary means of recording and communication," adds Tee.
Calligraphy soon began to occupy a prominent position in China when specimens of handwriting began to be valued, collected and treated as art.
One of the earliest recorded instances concerns the first-century emperor Ming of the Han, who, upon hearing that his cousin was on his deathbed, dispatched a messenger to obtain a piece of his writing before he passed away.
By so doing, Emperor Ming was hoping to be able to "commune" with his relative, even after death, through the traces of his personality embodied by his calligraphy.
The Chinese script had developed and progressed through time, and was influenced by the different, important Chinese dynasties. Some of the ancient script writings are still being used today.
The enduring unity of China has always been contingent on writing.
Dialects mutually impenetrable in spoken form share a single written system: Someone who knows only Cantonese cannot understand someone speaking Mandarin, but they can read each other's writing perfectly, and this shared system defines the boundaries of the world's most diffuse country. The lingua franca of China is the written word.
"But writing has become a lost art," laments Tee with a wry smile.
I agree with him. With the advent of technology, letter-writing is among our most ancient of arts. Think of letters and the mind falls on Paul of Tarsus, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Austen and Mark Twain.
A good handwritten letter is a creative act, and not just because it is a visual and tactile pleasure. It is a deliberate act of exposure, a form of vulnerability, because handwriting opens a window on the soul in a way that cyber communication can never do.
Writing long-hand is almost unheard of these days, I muse aloud morosely.
"Exactly!" replies Tee, adding half-wistfully: "Now calligraphy is no longer a means of communication. It's become an artform that should be preserved."
ACCIDENTAL DESTINY
His passion in calligraphy is palpable. "I began learning from the age of eight," confides Tee, matter-of-factly. It wasn't a planned journey, he assures me with a grin. "I mean, it's quite a stretch to think that anyone would take up calligraphy at an early age because they love it!"
He admits to loving fine art from an early age. "I enjoyed drawing and painting for as long as I could remember," he reveals.
The Klang-born Tee tells me that his parents insisted on art classes so that he wouldn't be left alone at home while they worked.
"My father was a carpenter and my mum was an office executive," he shares, smiling, adding: "They weren't really interested in art but they still carted me off to art classes, which on hindsight, was a great decision on their part!"
Being an only child, his parents grew concerned that he might not have the social skills to mix around with children his age.
"They were working parents and often worried that I'd end up being a loner!" he muses with a chuckle.
Recognising his early talent in art, his parents started signing him up for art competitions.
"We went everywhere!" he recalls. "If there was an art competition at a shopping mall, my parents would bring me there to take part. It was a great way to make friends and do what I loved most, so I didn't really mind!"
And then the stars aligned themselves for the young artist. He won a three-month calligraphy art course at one of the local art competitions when he was eight.
"Did you fall in love with it immediately?" I ask curiously, adding: "Did the magic start the minute you picked up the brush?" I mean, of course magic had to happen.
He bursts into a hearty laughter. "No," he finally replies. He joined the class willingly because he liked a girl there. "That kept me interested at first!" he quips, grinning.
Okay, so it was a girl. Forget love-at-first-sight for calligraphy.
Did the magic happen soon after? I press.
He shakes his head again. "I had an aptitude for it but I was motivated by the fact that we could participate in competitions. Getting an award for calligraphy inspired me more than the actual art itself," he admits sheepishly.
But his calligraphy teacher soon convinced the young boy to pursue the art seriously. "He told me that we ought to keep this dying art alive. He even said that I could be a teacher one day."
When he turned 17, Tee eventually started assisting his teacher in teaching the art of calligraphy at a local Buddhism association.
His love for the arts triggered his interest to pursue a degree in fine arts.
"When I was in Form 3, I had already decided to do fine arts. My parents were of course against the idea," he confesses. "They wanted me to be an accountant."
But after a few years of "negotiating", as he laughingly puts it, they finally agreed that he could pursue graphic designing instead.
"You would at least make money and you can do your art on the side part-time," they reasoned. "I agreed-lah" he recounts, shrugging his shoulders before adding: "No matter what, I'm grateful that they guided me and got me into art in the first place!"
He graduated as a graphic designer and currently lectures at a local college. But teaching and learning about calligraphy remain Tee's lifelong passions.
The accolades followed soon after. Tee has since ranked in the Top 10 at Chua Tee Pow Malaysia's Calligraphy National Competition in 2015 and was awarded with the World Peace Award in The Egypt Cairo 10th World Peace Painting and Calligraphy Competition.
Tee, who is still single, confesses that his passions keep him busy.
"I don't have much of a social life," he admits with a smile. "Art has fully occupied my world!"
LAWS OF ATTRACTION
The only attraction that's worth talking about, according to Tee with a cheeky grin, is calligraphy.
"What attracts you to calligraphy?" I ask him curiously.
"It's all about the history of the artform," he explains thoughtfully. "While Western artforms are colourful, Chinese calligraphy has limited colours to draw upon. Using these sparse colours, we draw out stories and imageries that speak more than a mere picture."
The tools for Chinese calligraphy are few — an ink stick, an ink stone, a brush, and rice paper.
The calligrapher, using a combination of technical skill and imagination, must provide interesting shapes to the strokes and must compose beautiful structures from them without any retouching or shading and, most important of all, with well-balanced spaces between the strokes.
This balance, adds Tee, needs years of practice and training.
The phrase "a picture tells a thousand words" are commonly used in art. And in the case of Chinese calligraphy, it's not far-fetched to say that each character tells a thousand words.
There are at least four levels, he explains, at which someone who does not know Chinese may appreciate a work of Chinese calligraphy.
The first, and perhaps easiest, is by seeing pure abstraction; anyone with an interest in painting can appreciate the balances that an individual writer achieves on paper.
The second is by reading the text in translation and trying to see how its spirit is manifest in the calligraphy.
The third is by identifying particular characters and trying to see how different writers have realised them.
The fourth is by imagining what mood or spirit would impel particular decisions: Why one calligrapher leaves his brush on the page as he goes from character to character; why another seems to be emphasising legibility above all; why another seems to be making his characters so attenuated that they are hardly readable; why much ink is used here and little ink there; why the ink is dry and powdery here and wet and swift there; why one character shows the brush stroke while another seems to be a perfect black shape.
In its most basic form, it is essentially the writing of words with brush and ink. Yet at the same time, it is much more than that. Each character is designed to fit into an imaginary square grid no matter how many strokes of the brush is required.
They are written from vertically from top to bottom and horizontally from right to left, explains Tee.
More than that, it is the nature of skilled artisans to transfer auspicious energy onto their writings. This is one big reason why calligraphy, says Tee, has an undeniable place in the practice of feng shui.
"A lot of clients ask for calligraphy works that convey words of general well-being and blessings," he shares, adding: "The artwork can serve a dual purpose in feng shui — of both enhancement of good luck and dissolving the bad."
In Chinese calligraphy, words matter, asserts Tee. Very often, Chinese words have multiple layers of meaning.
What in English we call a "word" is in Chinese composed of one or more characters and the character is the sum of its parts; simpler components with basic meanings form complex combinations with greater depth.
For the superstitious, these words are believed to bring in luck and blessings. It was Lu You, a poet of China's Song Dynasty who said: "With a smile, you play with the brush and ink and sickness becomes lighter."
Tee remains one of the few masters who believes that calligraphy has a place in our modern world.
Concludes the master: "Not only does Chinese calligraphy give us insight into an ancient art form that has been in existence for thousands of years, it can also build a strong foundation of belonging and acceptance through cultural celebration and education, which is something that I'm still teaching to this day."
And because they date to such an ancient time, a time when it was said that deities walked the Earth and oracles deciphered the will of gods by reading characters on bones, the Chinese script is infused with this divine culture. And it is right there, just beneath the surface still, waiting for us to notice and celebrate.