Ｍａｓｔｅｒ’ｓ Ｓｏｌｉｔｕｄｅ ｏｆ ３９ Ｙｅａｒｓ

The 46-year-old Du Juan has been practicing calligraphy every day since she was seven. Today she is the only provincial master of crafts and arts still working at Hangzhou-based 133-year-old Wangxingji Fans Company. Other provincial masters have either retired or passed away. Her daily routine appears quite uninteresting and even dull and boring: she sits quietly in a workshop， writing extremely tiny Chinese characters on the surface of a black paper folding fan. Yes， her work seems quite simple， but what she writes is extremely valuable. Take her latest work for example. Characters are written in gold powder and each of the 7，000 characters of the text of Art of War by Sun Zi measures only 3 millimeters by 3 millimeters. The writing progresses slowly. Copying the full text onto a surface of a folding fan usually takes 2 months.

For Du Juan， she seems to have been cut out for such a life of quietude and solitude. Today， her serenity and commitment to the art of writing microscopic Chinese characters have seemingly become ingrained in her temperament. If time flew back 300 years， some friends comment， she could have been a lady who would never venture out of her house. Probably her temperament has something to do with her father Wang Chuanzhong. Although he had only two years schooling， he has spent his lifetime buying books and building up his private library. One room in his 80-m2 apartment houses more than 10，000 books. In 2000， his library was rated as one of Hangzhou’s top ten private libraries.

When Du Juan was still a child， her father hoped she would develop some interest in Pipa， a guitar-like traditional Chinese instrument. But the girl did not fancy that. Her biggest joy was to practice calligraphy. Nowadays， the best books Du Juan enjoys reading are classical copybooks of calligraphy. She studies characters written by ancient masters and creates variations on her own. She has not watched television for more than 10 years， thinking she can afford not to watch showbiz scandals and rumors. She is content with her salary， for she has no big desire for material things. During weekends， she often hikes into hills around the West Lake.

In 2006， the city government offered provincial masters of arts and crafts free showrooms in a street by Hefang Street， the revived prototype of ancient Hangzhou’s shopping center. Since then， Du Juan has alternated her workdays between the factory and the showroom. She works two weekdays at the showroom and her father doubles as a salesperson there on other days.

Watching her writing on a fan is great delight. It looks easy and simple， but the proficiency yields from commitment and solitary years. She came to Wangxingji in 1979 at the age of 17. For a girl who had already practiced calligraphy for ten years， it was a dream job， for it put what she had learned into a job.Moreover， there were advantages: it meant financial security， there was no graveyard shift， and she studied under the guidance of Zhu Nianci， a master of writing microscopic characters on fan surfaces who later became Wangxingji’s only national master of arts and crafts. So her commitment came about naturally. Learning to write on fan surfaces is by no means easy. During these years， the air-conditioner was something unheard-of in Hangzhou and the city still had freezing winters and sweltering summers. Writing on a black-paper fan surface is very challenging， for beneath the paper surface are bamboo ribs， which make the surface uneven. And no mistakes are allowed or the whole piece is useless. Another big thing she learned in her apprentice days was to pour glue onto hundreds of paper-thin gold foils and grind them into powder for writing. The grinding requires patience， physical strength and skill.

Commitment is probably something not so rare， but it is hard to keep one’s commitment alive and intact over decades whereas great changes take place. Du Juan and six other young people were employed as young painters and calligraphers on the same day by Wangxingji and today the other six have left Wangxingji. The 1970s was the best time Wangxingji enjoyed since its inception in 1875. In its best days the factory had 429 employees. Since then， veterans have retired and many young people have quit. Today， the factory has only 72 employees.

Fortunately， the fan-making art of Wangxingji is now on the provincial list of cultural heritage. Experts from Wangxingji have been visiting the company’s retired artists to put together an archive of techniques， processes， and masterpieces.

Her commitment has bloomed beautifully. The year 2000 witnessed her begin to create her own masterpieces. In 2000， she wrote the 20，000-character full text of The Analects of Confucius onto a 40-centimeter-long fan surface. It won a national gold medal. The masterpiece was purchased and housed at the Drum Tower in Hangzhou as its most important treasure. The same masterpiece was exhibited in 2005 at an international exhibition in Hangzhou and won another gold prize. A 27-centimer-long fan surface that bears the Sutra of Amitabha Buddha went into the collection of West Lake Museum in 2005. Another Buddhist sutra written by Du Juan on a 30-centimeter-long fan surface went to the collection of Zhejiang Provincial Museum in 2006.

In recent years， Du Juan has begun creating artworks that combine painting and calligraphy. Painting and Poetry of Hangzhou is a case in point. She was totally clueless what to do after hitting upon the idea of creating West Lake scenes and copying poems on the same fan surface. A piece of news on radio inspired her. She thought it was a good idea to put the Qiantang River into her creation. After trying hard for a few months， she was not satisfied with her design. Another inspiration came during her visit to an art exhibition. She decided to use a scroll and put the scenes of the West Lake and the Qiantang River on the upper edge and the down edge respectively， leaving the center space for poems. It took two months for her to translate her design into a great masterpiece. She felt mentally and physically exhausted on the day when she finished the last stroke of the writing.#8194;□