The calligraphy style of "Cuan Baozi Stele" is regular script with obvious official meaning.
The full name of "Cuan Baozi Stele" is "Tombstone of Cuan Fujun, General Zhenwei of the Jin Dynasty and Prefect of Jianning". This stele was inscribed in the fourth year of Taiheng in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, that is, the first year of Yixi (405 AD). It was unearthed in the 43rd year of Qianlong's reign in the Qing Dynasty (AD 1778) at Yangqitian, 70 miles south of Qujing, Yunnan. It was later moved to Wuhou Temple and is now in the "Cuan Stele Pavilion" of Qujing No. 1 Middle School. It is a national key cultural relic protection unit. The monument is 190 cm high and 71 cm wide.
"Cuan Baozi Monument" has 13 lines, each line has 30 words. The lower part contains 13 lines of the name of the person who erected the monument, with 4 characters in each line. The inscription records the life of the tomb owner Cuan Baozi and his praise for the tomb owner. In the lower right corner of the stele are engraved six lines of official script postscript written by Deng Erheng, the prefect of Qujing in the second year of Xianfeng in the Qing Dynasty (1852 AD). The font of this monument belongs to the transitional style from official script to regular script. The whole stele contains more than 400 words, with a natural layout, looking left and right, echoing from beginning to end, permeating the entire text, being harmonious and unified, and full of literary brilliance.
The "Cuan Baozi Stele" records the life of Cuan Baozi, the owner of the stele. Cuan Baozi was born in Tongle, Jianning (now Luliang, Yunnan). Born in AD 380 and died in AD 403. At the age of 19, he was appointed as the governor of Jianning (now Qujing, Yunnan). He was in a period when wars in the Central Plains were still frequent and the Cuan family ruled Nanzhong (now Yunnan, Guizhou and southern Sichuan). The most powerful surnames in the south were Huo, Cuan, and Meng. In 399 AD, after the two surnames Huo and Meng died together, Cuan became the most powerful force. Although Cuan Baozi was a weak official, he was very good at judging the situation. On the one hand, he expressed his obedience to the Central Plains dynasty, and on the other hand, he implemented the policy of national equality and unity. He worked diligently in government and made the people happy and in their rightful place. Therefore, after his death, the officials and the people were filled with grief and specially carved stones and erected monuments for him to express their grief and reverence.
The "Taiheng" mentioned in the stele was the reign name changed by Emperor Jin'an in the year of Renyin (402 AD). It was renamed Yuanxing the following year, and then changed again in Yisi (405 AD). Yixi. Yunnan is far away on the border and does not know the changes in the era names in the mainland, so it still uses them.
"Cuan Baozi Monument" breaks the symmetry and balance of the normal norm. The knots are extremely bold, and the size is often unexpected. It seems inappropriate, but in fact it has profound artistic principles. It seeks truth in danger and contains movement in silence. Seek stillness in motion. The characters that appear repeatedly are completely different and each has its own mood, reflecting the Jin people's aesthetic psychology of seeking novelty and difference. The characters with many strokes in the stele were made large, while the simple ones were made small. There are also many other characters with added or subtracted strokes, many of which were uniquely created by Cuan Stele. Another example is the construction of the character "宝". "One point becomes a rule", which has become the criterion of this character. Various lines and their interlacing and coordination are extended and developed in the form, meaning and rules of points. Their inversion and folding The strokes and shapes of turning, turning and releasing guide the momentum of the following strokes and regulate the size, thickness, length, exposure, etc. of the following strokes, and they all contain the image of the first "point".