As a member of Yungang Cup Organizing Committee and vice chairman of China Calligraphy Association, Mr. Liu Hongbiao made the following statement about Weibei when interviewed by the organizer:
Weibei is a regular script. Who wrote this word? Xianbei people, (Weibei) is actually the reason why a non-Han people write Chinese characters, (Weibei) is a regional calligraphy style, and northerners are bold and strong ... Writing on stones represents this aesthetic interest of a large area and a large group of people. ...
Of course, here are just a few key quotations from Mr. Liu's interview. In order to avoid being taken out of context, you can find a complete interview with Yungang Cup and learn it again.
So what you can notice here is that Mr. Liu clearly expressed his understanding of the study of Weibei-Weibei was written by Xianbei people, not Han people.
In normal times, Mr. Liu's expression of the above views on a certain program won't cause much concern and controversy, but this time, because a calligraphy that was handed down as a grand prize spread all over the network, calligraphy lovers paid more attention to everything about Yungang Cup, which happened to be a coincidence, so Mr. Liu's statement about Wei Bei immediately became a new hot topic.
In a short time, calligraphy users left a lot of comments on Mr. Liu's statement that Weibei was written by Xianbei people. The most common comment is that netizens gave him two words-ignorance!
Most people think that the study of Wei Bei's calligraphy should not only be viewed from the perspective of calligraphy, but also from the perspective of history. Mr. Liu's definition of Weibei as written by Xianbei people is ridiculous and lacks common sense for most calligraphy lovers.
Some history lovers believe that Mr. Liu Hongbiao said this because Datong was indeed the place where Xianbei people first established political power. Xianbei people at that time must have learned something from Han people, including writing and writing methods. Judging from some stone carvings preserved in the existing grottoes, many of them still retain the flavor of many official scripts.
Therefore, Mr. Liu thinks that this is because Xianbei people created such a style of writing on the basis of official script when studying Chinese culture. In other words, when Xianbei people study Chinese characters, they write that they have changed and become Weibei, inadvertently creating the style of Weibei.
However, the view of Weibei was not produced until the Qing Dynasty, and there was no such view before. Because all orthodox historical records actually do not recognize such a regime as the Northern Wei Dynasty, because ancient culture is orthodoxy based on Chinese culture in the Central Plains. For example, Zi Tong Zhi Jian did not adopt the chronological standard of the Northern Wei regime when recording this history.
Weibei is called Weibei because its geographical and time nodes occurred in the Northern Wei Dynasty, so it is not bad to call it Weibei. However, the appearance of Wei Bei actually conforms to the natural development law of calligraphy in China, such as the development of seal script to official script, and the evolution of official script is just concentrated in this stage of the Northern Wei Dynasty, so Wei Bei belongs to the natural evolution of calligraphy.
However, the main body of the evolution and creation of Weibei font was still Han Chinese, because Xianbei people were still in the initial stage of learning and assimilation at that time, and could not re-create official script. Although Xianbei established the Northern Wei Dynasty in the north at that time, a large number of people of Central Plains culture and cultural class also stayed in the north.
Therefore, if Xianbei people want to rule the north, they have to be assimilated by the Central Plains culture. On the surface, Xianbei people controlled the north, but in fact, it was the process of Xianbei people being assimilated by Chinese culture. At that time, calligraphy was evolving from official script to regular script
Xianbei people may have learned the font "Weibei" in the process of evolution, but the people who created this font were still the mainstream cultural intellectuals in China at that time. That is to say, Weibei's font is still a calligraphy font created by the Han people. It was just created in the Northern Wei Dynasty and named Weibei, which does not mean that it was created by Xianbei people.
Of course, Mr. Liu didn't explain the basis and source of his argument, so many calligraphers think that we can actually listen to Mr. Liu's further explanation. Maybe Mr. Liu can do another program to talk about the source of his view that "Weibei was written by Xianbei people".
In fact, at the academic level, everyone can express their views. Experts like Mr Liu Hongbiao can certainly express their different views on Weibei. Of course, netizens can criticize him for being "ignorant" because of his different views, but he also has the right to prove that he is not ignorant. So in your opinion, was Wei Bei written by Xianbei people? Welcome to leave a message for discussion!