Zheng Xie, a painter and calligrapher in the Qing Dynasty, is known as one of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou. Zheng Xie was good at both poetry and calligraphy, which was called "Three Musts" at that time. His calligraphy art is unique in the history of calligraphy and painting in China. His calligraphy is sui generis, which gives people the feeling of paving the way with stones, and is called "Banqiao style", while he himself jokingly calls it "six-and-a-half-book". He also explained: "Banqiao has neither the strength to pull out the rich Weng nor the smoothness of the loose snow. It is just strange, and it is a method that the real officials are related to each other, but it is mixed with grass." Judging from the calligraphy works he created, the so-called "the method of combining real officials with each other" actually means that official officials are involved in running script, and at the same time, they are written with the trend of writing cursive script. As for which "six points", which "half points" and where the rest "three and a half points" are, we can't stick to it. He writes in bluegrass, which is extremely natural and natural, and takes part in the glyphs of seal, official script, grass and kai, which are extremely varied. This running script of "Two Rest in Yanglin Crossing the Head to the East" embodies the unique formal beauty of Zheng Banqiao's calligraphy art, and the words "Peach Blossom Shore" are particularly beautiful and moving. Zheng Banqiao's unique style of new books initiated the history of calligraphy.
It is said that when Zheng Banqiao was young, he devoted himself to copying the works of famous calligraphers of past dynasties, and his temporary works reached the point of confusing the fake with the real. However, this did not make him famous, and he was still ignored by the world. Once, he woke up from a dream, wrote on his thigh with his finger, wrote and wrote on his wife. The wife woke up with a start and asked discontentedly, "You have your body (body) and I have mine. Why don't you practice on your own body?" The speaker has no intention, but the listener has intention. Zheng Banqiao got an unexpected inspiration from his wife's words. Since then, he has made great efforts to find a new way to achieve mastery through a comprehensive study. On the basis of absorbing the strengths of major calligraphers, he has worked hard to forge his own style, and created a unique "six-and-a-half-minute book", which is often called "Banqiao style". At this point, he became famous and began to be known as a calligrapher. Zheng Xie's calligraphy is not only written in cursive brushwork, but also in the brushwork of painting Lanzhu. Jiang Shiquan has a poem: "Banqiao writes words like orchids, and the waves are strange and ancient; Banqiao writes orchids like words, and the leaves are sparse and the flowers are seen. Don't be a self-contained pen, and calligraphy and painting don't want ordinary people to boast; The Tang and Tang dynasties have their own attitudes, and ordinary people laugh at Banqiao monsters. " Fu Baoshi, a well-known modern painter, also said that Zheng Xie's words "are a new book style that combines the four styles of truth, cursive script, official script and seal script, with truth and official script as the main ones, and are written by painting." (On Zheng Banqiao)
It can be seen that Zheng Banqiao is determined to betray tradition and make bold self-innovation in calligraphy. This kind of innovation is mainly manifested in two aspects: one is to break the boundaries of seal script, official script, official script, line script and cursive script, and arrange the stippling and structure of characters at will, mainly using regular script and official script together; The second is to break the boundaries between painting and calligraphy, and integrate the method of painting bamboo and orchid into calligraphy. He once said that his books "often take the paintings of Shen Shitian, Xu Wenchang and Gao Qipei as the brushwork." ("Zheng Banqiao's Inscription on the Ink Bamboo Map") Look at his handwriting, its stippling is thick or thin, thick or light, long or short, and its structure is sparse or dense, positive or oblique, all natural, and it is slightly exaggerated. It forms a characteristic of shaping with things and following the shape. On the whole, its fonts are mostly rectangular with low left and high right. Because of this characteristic, his calligraphy has vertical lines without horizontal columns, and there is a kind of "disorderly stone paved street" between words and lines. Zheng Banqiao's calligraphy works are mostly spread to later generations in the form of poems with paintings. Such works appear in the form of poems, books and paintings, and the art of calligraphy is integrated with poems and paintings, showing unique beauty. He also wrote some judgments that he didn't intend to write for the sake of being an official, and also had a unique interest in calligraphy. On the contrary, some of his calligraphy works intentionally created use many variant characters and self-made characters. Although the composition and layout are deliberately managed, they are inevitably a little sloppy. But ... On the whole, Zheng Xie-shi is a geek and a genius in the Qing Dynasty and even in the whole history of calligraphy. His "Banqiao Style" is a shining pearl in the history of calligraphy.