A: Calligraphy in the Southern Dynasties became an important period in the history of calligraphy because it inherited and carried forward the tradition of the two kings. From the Song Dynasty to the early Liang Dynasty, the calligraphy circle was shrouded by Wang Xianzhi's calligraphy style, and Wang Xizhi's calligraphy style, which tended to be archaic, was left out in the cold. Starting from Liang Wudi, because of his pushing Wang Xizhi, the ethos of Xiao Wang began to decline, and the ethos of Zhong You and Wang came and went. In the Southern Dynasties, literati calligraphy was the mainstream.
The stone carvings in the Northern Dynasties are rough and simple, bold and graceful. The brushwork shows a sense of Jun Fang and preciseness, and it is unique without modification, which is another aesthetic model in the history of China's calligraphy. It is in sharp contrast with the implicit, chic and aesthetic literati style in the south. The calligraphy style in the Northern Dynasties was formed by many factors such as social environment, geographical conditions, times and culture, and it was not the calligrapher's subjective aesthetic pursuit, so it was essentially different from the new book style formed by Zhong You's changing regular script and Wang Xizhi's changing clock method. The stone carving calligraphy in the Northern Dynasties was not all excellent. The pursuit of epigraphy by epigraphists began in the Qing Dynasty, not in the Northern Dynasty. The magnificent, broken and mottled inscriptions of the Northern Dynasties that we see today are the result of natural conditions and the product of unconsciousness. Therefore, the artistic value of stone carvings in the Northern Dynasties cannot be confused with the conscious exploration of calligraphy beauty by epigraphy in the Qing Dynasty. It can be said that the inscriptions in the Northern Dynasties exist not only in the objective historical situation, but also in the understanding of him in different times.