The running script "Chen Jihe Shu" written by Deng Shiru, a great calligrapher in the Qing Dynasty, is also related to a famous anecdote in history. Deng Shiru kept two cranes at home. It is said that these two cranes are at least 130 years old. One day, the female crane died, and only a few days later, Deng Shiru's first wife Shen also passed away. This coincidence caused many associations among the literati at that time. The 59-year-old Deng Shiru was extremely sad, and the crane was crying alone, and they depended on him for life. Because he couldn't bear to see the lonely crane's sad look, Deng Shiru chose the Jixianguan Buddhist Temple thirty miles away and fostered the crane in a monk's house. From then on, he carried grain and fed cranes, traveling thirty miles back and forth every month. Suddenly, one day, while he was staying at Daming Temple in Yangzhou, he received a report that Xionghe had been spotted by the prefect of Anqing and was captured back to the mansion. He immediately set off and rushed back to Anqing, writing the "Chen Ji He Shu" in cursive script to express his love to Suo He, the prefect.
This article is written in a sad, moving and tear-jerking way, with overwhelming momentum and diction as if it were clouds and heaven. It uses extremely parallelism, personification and other rhetorical techniques to recount the cranes and express the cranes’ sad and happy past. For the sake of this crane, he could put his life and death at risk, just as it is written in the book, "The power of an adult can move mountains, and the mountain people will turn into cranes, and the cranes will turn into mountain people without hesitation." The prefect received the letter, speechless, and soon Return the crane to the Buddhist temple.
Deng Shiru went to school with his father when he was 9 years old, but dropped out of school at the age of 10. At the age of 14, "because he was poor, he could not go to school, so he went from village to village collecting woodcutters and selling cakes and bait, and then he became a monk." However, under the influence of his grandfather and father, he developed a deep interest in calligraphy, epigraphy, poetry and prose, and made great progress. When he was 17 years old, he wrote the seal script "Xuelangzhai Inscription and Preface" for "the handsome old man", which was well received by people at the time. Since then, he has embarked on the road of calligraphy and engraving art. When he was 20 years old, he set up a school in his hometown and served as a children's teacher. He couldn't stand the students' "silly jumping" and gave it up. He went to Shouzhou (today's Shouxian County) with his father to teach education. At the age of 21, he resigned from the school because of the death of his wife. He traveled abroad and carved books. , to ease grief.
When he was 32 years old in the 39th year of Qianlong's reign (1774), he returned to Shouzhou to teach. He often carved seals and wrote fans in small seal script for the students of Shouchun Xunli Academy. He was highly appreciated by Liang Xian, the lecturer of the academy (a native of Bo County, who was famous for his good copying of Li Beihai's books), and recommended him to study at Mei Miu's family in Jinling (now Nanjing). The Mei family has been a prominent family since the Song Dynasty. It is also the family with the largest collection of calligraphy and calligraphy treasures bestowed upon them by Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty. The Mei family has a collection of "secret treasures" and many rare epigraphy and stone books from the Qin and Han dynasties. Shi Ru looked at the Expo, studied it carefully, and worked hard. He stayed in the Mei family for 8 years, the first five years he specialized in seal script, and the last three years he studied Chinese characters. In forty-seven years, when he was 40 years old, he left the Mei family, traveled to various scenic spots, copied a large number of ancient steles, refined his calligraphy art, and finally produced "Zhuanli Zhenxingcao", which has all the components. A large number of works of its own. In the forty-seventh year of Qianlong's reign, he traveled to Huangshan to She County, where he met Fang Junren, a famous epigrapher from Hui School, Cheng Yaotian, a classics scholar from Xinan, and Jin Bang, who was compiled by the Hanlin Academy and was good at the study of seal scripts. After being recommended by Mei Mi and Jinbang, he met Cao Wenqian, the Minister of Household Affairs. In the autumn of the fifty-fifth year of Qianlong's reign, on Hongli's eightieth birthday, Cao Wenwen came to the capital to celebrate his birthday and asked Deng Shiru to go. Shiru refused to go with Wenwen's entourage. Instead, he wore a straw hat and mango shoes and rode a donkey alone. When he arrived in Beijing, his calligraphy was seen by calligrapher Liu Wenqing and connoisseur Lu Xixiong. They were greatly surprised and commented: "This has not been done for thousands of years." Later, he was squeezed out by calligraphers represented by cabinet scholar Weng Fanggang and was forced to " "He immediately left the capital", and was introduced by Cao Wenqian to Bi Yuanjie, the governor of the two lakes and governor of the Ministry of War (at Wuchang) as a guest of honor, and taught Bi Yuanzi how to read "Shuo Wen Yuan". After three years in the office, he found it was not in line with his purpose, so he left.
In the 59th year of Qianlong's reign, when he was 52 years old, he returned to his hometown from Wuchang and bought 40 acres of land. The following year, he built a house and placed a plaque with the words "Iron Inkstone House" at the front of the door. He often engraved books and sold them to help the villagers. He also tried his best to help those who were too poor to be buried. In the next 10 years, his calligraphy and engraving art became more and more perfect. Regardless of his age, he often traveled to Jingkou (now Zhenjiang), Nanjing, Yangzhou, Changzhou, Suzhou, Hangzhou and other places. A year before his death, he climbed Mount Tai to meet friends and compare skills. When he was 60 years old, he traveled to Jingkou, met Bao Shichen, and taught him calligraphy for three years. He also used the key points of calligraphy to say: "You can move horses in sparse places, do not allow ventilation in dense places, and always think of white to treat black, and strange things will come out." "The book of the Six Dynasties is fully consistent with its legal test. When he was about to die at the age of 63, he still collected his disciple Cheng Heng's shirt into the seal script "Zhang Zixi Ming". That year, I learned that there were eight steles in Jingxian County that needed to be written in large seal script, small seal script, Fenshu and Xingkai script. I accepted the invitation with great enthusiasm. Only one of the steles returned due to illness and died at home in October of the lunar calendar.