" Writing Chinese characters," her mother told her," is entirely different from writing English words. You think differently. You feel differently." And it was true: LuLing was different when she was writing and painting. She was calm, organized, and decisive.
" Bao bomu taught me how to write," LuLing said one evening. "She taught me how to think. When you write, she said, you must gather the free-flowing of your heart." To demonstrate, LuLing wrote the character for "heart". "See? Each stroke has its own rhythm, its balance, its proper place. Bao bomu said everything in life should be the same way."
" Who’s Bao bomu again?" Ruth asked.
" She took care of me when i was a girl. She loved me very much, just like a mother. Bao, well, this means ‘precious’, and together with bomu, this means ‘Precious Auntie’. Oh, that Bao bomu, the crazy ghost. LuLing started to write a simple horizontal line. But the movements were not simple. She rested the tip of the brush on the paper, so it was like a dancer sur les pointes. The tip bent slightly downward, curtsied, and then, as if blown by capricious winds, swept to the right, paused, turned a half step to the left and rose. Ruth blew out a sigh. Why even try? Her mother would just get upset that she could not do it right.
Some nights LuLing found ways to help Ruth remember the characters. "Each radical comes from an old picture from a long time ago." She made a horizontal stroke and asked Ruth if she could see what the picture was. Ruth squinted and shook her head. LuLing made the identical stroke. Then again and again, asking each time if Ruth knew what it was. Finally her mother let out a snort, the compressed form of her disappointment and disgust.
" This line is like a beam of light. Look, can you see it or not?"
To Ruth, the line looked like a sparerib picked clean of meat.
LuLing went on: " Each character is a thought, a feeling, meanings, history, all mixed into one." She drew more lines. dots and dashes, downstrokes and upstrokes, bends and hooks. "Do you see this?" she said over and over, tink-tink-tink. " This line, and this and this - the shape of a heavenly temple." And when Ruth shrugged in response, LuLIng added, "In the old style temples," as if this word old would bump the Chinese gears of her daughter’s mind into action. Ping ping! Oh, I see.
Later LuLing had Ruth try her hand at the same character, the whole time stuffing Chinese logic into her resistant brain. "Hold your wrist this way, firm but still loose, like a young willow branch - aiya, not collapsed like a beggar lying on the road… Draw the stroke with grace, like a bird landing on a branch, not an executioner chopping off a devil’s head. The way you drew it - well, look, the whole thing is falling down. Do it like this… light first, then temple. See? Together, it means ‘news from the gods.’ See how this knowledge comes from above? See how Chinese words make sense?
-THE BONESETTER’S DAUGHTER,
AMY TAN
