Huaisu's height of five feet four is a way of describing Huaisu's height.
According to historical records, in the Han Dynasty, one foot was equal to 0.233 meters. A tall man with a height of more than one foot was only more than 1.6 meters tall. Huaisu's height was about 1.8 meters. It was considered very high at the time. Huai Su (725-785) was a calligrapher in the Tang Dynasty. His common surname was Qian, his courtesy name was Zangzhen, and his monk's name was Huaisu. He was born in Chang'an and came from a famous family.
Huaisu is one of the "Eight Great Masters of Tang and Song Dynasties". Although he is a master of cursive calligraphy that only happens once in a thousand years in the history of calligraphy, no authentic works of Huaisu's cursive calligraphy have been handed down to the world. Only a few copies of "Xiao Cao Thousand Character Essay", "Autobiography Calligraphy" and "Notre Dame Calligraphy" have been handed down. The article "Huaisu grew up in Shasha, practiced Buddhism since he was young, and was quite good at penmanship in his spare time of meditation." It shows that while practicing Buddhist scriptures, he also developed a strong interest in the art of calligraphy.
Because Changsha, Hunan is the hometown of cursive script, the cursive script was chosen due to the influence of the environment. Huaisu was smart and studious since he was a child, but because his family was poor and could not afford paper, he had to use banana leaves instead of paper to practice calligraphy. Since he couldn't afford pen and ink, Huaisu used wooden sticks to practice calligraphy on the ground, walls, and banana leaves. In order to learn calligraphy, he became a monk.
Later, he received the guidance of Yan Zhenqing in Chang'an, and made friends with famous poets such as Li Bai, Du Fu, Qian Qi, Dai Shulun, etc., which greatly improved his calligraphy. The calligraphy works handed down from generation to generation include "Autobiography Calligraphy", "Xiaocao Thousand Character Essay" on paper, "Bitter Bamboo Shoots Calligraphy", "Notre Dame Calligraphy" and "On Calligraphy Calligraphy".
Artistic Features
Huaisu's cursive calligraphy is called "Kangcao". The pen is round and powerful, making the circle like a circle, unrestrained and smooth, and completed in one go. It is as famous as Zhang Xu. Later generations were known as "Zhang Dian Su Kuang" or "Dian Zhang Zui Su", which had a profound influence on future generations. He could also write poetry and had contacts with poets such as Li Bai, Du Fu, and Su Huan.
I like to drink. Whenever drinking occurs, I will write on walls, clothes and utensils at will. People at that time called me a "drunken monk". His cursive script comes from Zhang Zhi and Zhang Xu. "The Story of the Golden Pot" said that he was "drunk nine times a day". Probably the drunkard's intention is not to drink, "a mad monk is not for wine, his mad pen reaches to the sky", he only aims at "crazy grass".