Huang Tingjian, one of the four bachelors in Suzhou, naturally dared not compare with his teacher, so he had to come second. After being replaced by Cai Xiang, the level naturally declined, ranking last.
Su Shi (1037-111), known as Zi Zhan, known as He Zhong, was born in Meishan, Sichuan, and was buried in Jiahu for two years (1057). He is knowledgeable and has high attainments in literature, poetry, ci, books and paintings. He is the favorite literary artist of later generations and a historical figure known to all women and children. Su Shi is not only an advocate of literati painting in the history of China painting, but also one of the representatives of calligraphy in the Northern Song Dynasty.
Su Shi was implicated in the Yuan Party case. Not only was he not recorded in Xuanhe Pu Shu, but his calligraphy works were also destroyed. There are nearly 30 original calligraphy works handed down from generation to generation, among which Zhipingtie is the most important work in the early and middle period, followed by Wen Zhiming's Postscript of the Ming Dynasty, which was written by Su Shi in his thirties. By the middle period, many famous works appeared, such as "Qianchibi Fu" in regular script and "Several Poems in Sacrifice to Yellow Emperor". Du Fu's Alnus Poetry, Huangzhou's Cold Food Poetry, and the New Year's celebration and two letters from the people are all representative works in the middle period. Su Shi's regular script is rare. From several of his two works, Fu on a Thousand Red Cliffs and Sacrifice to the Yellow River, we can see that the script is quite different from the rigorous Tang Kai, not only the font is on the left, but also the brushwork is naturally informal. Some people say that his calligraphy is so beautiful on the left side and so withered on the right side with his wrist on and his pen lying down. Huang Tingjian defended it, saying that Su Shu was read according to "Hanlin's ink ruler". In other words, Su Shi does not emphasize the rigorous statutes of calligraphy, even regular script. Judging from the pen and ink, Su Shu is not "lying on the pen", but using the pen slightly lower and still taking the pen as the center, so he has the posture of winning the pen. His running script is bigger and smaller, with flesh and blood, bones and flesh, and there are both Yan Zhenqing and Yang Ningshi's parents.
Su Shi's works in his later years are relatively few, the most famous of which are Visiting a Folk Teacher, Crossing the Sea and Jiang Shang. Among them, "thank you teacher" is a handwritten note to Xie Julian, and the front part has been damaged. This article is included in Dongpo Collection, which is an important article for Su Shi to express his personal literary creation views. His calligraphy is old and vigorous, unlike Huangzhou's cold food poems, which are changeable. The postscript of Gu Wenbin in Qing Dynasty quoted the previous book review "Dongpo's words are elegant, graceful, bold, strict and arrogant" to praise the beauty of this calligraphy. Su Shi did not care about the gains and losses of ugly calligraphy, and gained the greatest freedom in academic creation, thus becoming a calligrapher in the Northern Song Dynasty.