Huai Su was born in poverty, but he loved learning, especially calligraphy. It costs money to practice calligraphy. After becoming a monk at the age of ten, because I didn't have the money to buy paper to practice calligraphy, I found a board, painted it with white paint and wrote on it. However, the paint on the blackboard is so slippery that Huai Su finds it difficult to write on it.
At that time, Huai Su lived in a temple, and there was an idle land near the temple, where many plantains were planted. When banana leaves grow, he takes them off as paper to practice calligraphy. Because Huai Su practiced too hard, there were not enough banana leaves.
Clever Huai Su had a brainwave, came to the banana tree with pen and ink, and practiced calligraphy directly on the leaves. In summer, the sun scorched him, and his face was flushed with sweat; In winter, the cold wind blows hard and my hands hurt with cold. But Huai Su persisted. "Without severe cold, how can plum blossoms smell sweet?" .
Huai Su practiced in that banana forest day after day, year after year. The small pool where he often washes pens has turned into a dark "Mo Chi", and his used pens have piled up into a pen grave. His efforts finally made his calligraphy practice powerful.
In 759 AD, 22-year-old Huai Su and the famous poet Li Bai met unexpectedly in Lingling and drank a toast. The poet Li Bai praised his calligraphy: "The name of the teenager is Huai Su, and the cursive script is chinese odyssey. Mo Chi flew out of the North style fish, and the pen tip killed all Zhongshan rabbits ... "
Huai Su was not content to get such high praise from the poet Li Bai. He has a wish to travel to Chang 'an, the capital, where he has a broader world.
In Chang 'an, Huai Su studied diligently and eclectically, and gained a lot. Five years later, he is ready to go home. On his way home, he heard that there was a man named Wu Tong, a student of "Cao Sheng" Zhang Xu and a famous calligrapher. So, Huai Su inquired about Wu Tong's residence and took Wu Tong as his teacher. In Wu Tong's residence, he finally learned the secret of Taoist natural calligraphy.