MI FU (Xi'an)

First, the purpose of my trip was to sightsee "Terracotta Warriors and Horses (UNESCO)（兵馬俑）" in Xi'an, but I happened to see the most beautiful piece of work of Chinese calligraphy there. I found it in "Xi'an Stele Forest Museum（西安碑林博物館）", which was located inside of the walled-in city of Xi'an.

Road to the museum from the gate of calligraphy street was pretty long and definitely interesting to calligraphy learners. There were so many tools such as brush, seal impression, ink, and ink rubbing sold on both sides of street. I was curious about the price of large brush (weight approx. 1500g) so, asked in one shop how much the big brush would cost. It was 400 RMB, less than 1/10 of Japanese price.... My aunt who was traveling with me said, "Calligraphers would dribble saliva to be here."
We could've spent hours there, but hurried the way to the museum before it's closed. Museum had a great number of steles and stone sculptures of old times, and beautiful Chinese characters were carved on the stones. Some works were done by famous calligraphers, such as Wang Xizhi and Yan Qinli （王義氏、願真卿）. To me, it was incredible to see, "what you see in textbook is now in front of you". The place was quiet and there were only a few tourists. We had looked a great number of steles one by one. You know, handwriting shows personality. So, my aunt and I were guessing the personality of people who had lived and depicted them hundreds of years ago. When we entered the last hall, I smelled strong ink. Don't you love the smell of ink? Ink rubbings were taken in that hall.

Here comes my encounter with "MI FU", in the very last hall. When I first looked at his work, I didn't know what was happening. I saw something incredibly beautiful and perfect. What is this? That's how I felt. The piece of work was just PERFECT, no doubt. When I got good look at it, I found them even more admirable. Every words engraved there was so beautiful and written in cursive writing（行書体）. I am usually fond of printed style of writing（楷書体）, may be because I had never seen MI FU's cursive writing before, I thought.

On my way back to the hotel, I bought MI FU's ink rubbing next to the museum. Now, it's posted in my room. I feel happy just looking at it every day.