Anna Zhao

    anna.whizh@yahoo.com

    HUO ZHE, a Shenzhen designer in his 40s, is using creative design to reinvigorate the beauty of Chinese characters, or hanzi. Huo has published a magazine on artistic designs of hanzi with his own money in the hope that hanzi, which is representative of Chinese characteristics, will receive deserved attention. He is also an environmentalist who pursues peace with nature by living a simple life.

    Misunderstanding hanzi and Guoxue

    Different from most designers who prefer the bustling urban life and are busy socializing among peers, Huo now lives a leisurely life in a village house at the foot of Wutong Mountain in Luohu District and often saunters to the mountain for a fresh air with friends. This tranquil place offered him fresh inspiration and he has created 50 poems on the mountain.

    Huo said his interest in hanzi originated from his love for Confucian culture and affection for classical Chinese poetry, prose, paintings and calligraphy ever since his childhood.

    He came to Shenzhen 14 years ago as a professional designer, and his encounter with hanzi culture started 10 years ago, when he often took other designers to various design exhibitions. He said many designers would praise the works that integrated Chinese calligraphy into the elements of design, but, to his astonishment, the designs were often considered of Japanese origin because the works that borne the emblems of Chinese calligraphy used forms from the Japanese language.

    The question began to arise in his mind as to why certain symbols were identified as from an exotic language instead of from Chinese.

    He later referred to history books from the Opium War (1840) to the modern years after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China and found that many blamed traditional Chinese characters for China’s setbacks on the international stage due to its writing inefficiency. Traditional Chinese characters began to lose camping ground in China in 1956 when the country formally implemented a nationwide use of simplified Chinese characters. The campaign of opening up and reform in the 1970 created a surge in the country for people to learn from the west and study Latin-based languages.

    Huo believes that there is excessive emphasis on learning English among the Chinese while Chinese language and traditional Chinese civilization is appealingly ignored in China’s education system.

    Huo now teaches calligraphy part-time in Yuanling Primary School in Futian District and said his students thought he was from Taiwan or Hong Kong when he taught them stories about hanzi and explained traditional Chinese characters in his first lesson.

    Huo said an increasing number of parents have noticed the lack of classes on ancient Chinese culture and began to send their children to him for lessons, but he thinks the current fervor for the study is more often just a gaudy embellishment — he called it genetically modified sinology — because understanding of the topic is often superficial.

    “Parents often sign their children up for guoxue lessons, studies of ancient Chinese culture, because they think their children should receive guoxue through reciting ancient classics, using a writing brush or wearing traditional robes, even against their children’s wishes, which is too bad,” Huo said. “Pursuing authentic guoxue means serving as a role model for younger generations, rather than telling them to mimic our ancestors.”

    In his opinion, guoxue’s root is hanzi. They are like essential cells composing a complete functional organism, and one can’t learn guoxue well if they don’t know about hanzi.

    Creative hanzi design

    Huo has been doing creative Chinese characters design for 10 years and has produced a large volume of work.

    In one piece, he redesigned hanzi with reversed characters in diminishing sizes at descending arrays like in a visual testing chart. Words indicating sins, such as greed, extravagance, selfishness and lechery, are placed at the top of the chart in big letters and words indicating virtues, such as love, righteousness and benevolence, are at the bottom with a barely visible size, to raise awareness of nearsightedness for virtues.

    He also altered the design of the hanzi of double happiness, replacing one side of “喜” happiness with “善” kindness with the idea that today’s society should have more kindness. Other hanzi designs integrate allusions to classics or folk tales, provoking a profound meaning that goes beyond the forms.

    Huo has been doing aesthetic designs of hanzi for the past decade with little support of others.

    Last December, he took his designs to the city’s innovation fair. However, his booth was only frequented by visitors who were attracted to the designs, but unwilling to buy anything. “This awkward situation is common in China,” Huo said.

    He said the strength to support his art comes from his own interest in it and a strong sense of responsibility. “I feel I’m obliged to do something to carry forward Chinese culture, and it is my spiritual pursuit. I feel fortunate that I am doing something meaningful and taking joy from doing it,” he said.

    A lack of resources is the major difficulty preventing him from taking his undertaking further.

    “I don’t want to become a second Vincent van Gogh, whose talent was recognized posthumously. I hope I can see the days when my ideal is acknowledged and accepted by people,” Huo said.

    He doesn’t think doing hanzi design is outdated in the modern era. “Hanzi not only has practical use as a means of expression, but it also carries our spiritual heritage. It has our cultural essence in it, which is often ignored by modern people,” Huo said.

    Many scholars have expressed their concerns about weird spellings and ungrammatical use of hanzi on the Internet and worry that the use may spoil the integrity of hanzi. But Huo disagrees that the use of unorthodox writing or expressions is a setback for hanzi. He said that the era in which hanzi was mainly used for handwriting is ceding to the Internet era, one in which hanzi is used simply for information. In his opinion, Internet or slang hanzi is just a variant of hanzi, one that is developing with the times.

    Huo’s friend Zuo Chan, a calligrapher and painter, said Huo is a person with good knowledge of traditional Chinese culture and a professional understanding of hanzi culture. Zuo appreciates very much what Huo has done to promote hanzi culture by integrating his design expertise. “Nowadays, many people, including me, have hanzi amnesia because of excessive reliance on keyboards. I think Huo is rekindling hanzi culture and it is a very meaningful undertaking,” Zuo said. “But he needs more financial support to bring it to a larger audience because the hanzi culture, like anything else, needs to be nourished by the market.”

    A guardian of the

    natural environment

    Huo is a member of Greenriver, a non-government organization dedicated to environmental protection. He became an environmentalist under the influence a friend who was among the earliest volunteers who visited the natural reserve of Hoh Xil in Qinghai Province.

    He said environment protection is not an elixir for all environment problems, but it is a necessary part.

    Huo said many people mistook environmental sanitation as environmental protection and misunderstood that cleaning is protecting the environment.

    “Littering at a scenery resort doesn’t necessarily destroy the natural environment, but reckless alterations with natural terrains may cause irrevertable damage to nature,” Huo said. “Mankind should treat nature in a kinder way in a world where people don’t have to rely on exploiting natural resources for a living.”

    “Hanzi not only has practical use as a means of expression, but it also carries our spiritual heritage. It has our cultural essence in it, which is often ignored by modern people.”

    — Huo Zhe, a Shenzhen designer in his 40s, who is using creative design to rekindle love for Chinese characters