Tongzhou folk artist Xing Guanghai explains the details of a dragon-phoenix flower-and-bird calligraphy work. [Photo/Nantong Daily]

Xing Guanghai, a folk artist from Tongzhou district, Nantong, has spent more than 30 years practicing dragon-phoenix flower-and-bird calligraphy, a traditional Chinese art form.

The art originated from the bird-and-insect script of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770-256 BC) and grew into a blend of calligraphy and painting after the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220).

In this traditional art, characters are made of images like dragons, phoenixes, flowers, birds, fish, insects, and mountains. They resemble writing from a distance and reveal themselves as paintings up close.

Xing discovered the art around 1998 at a temple fair in Suzhou and learned the basics from an old artisan in just seven days. Then he kept improving on his own. He practiced at markets, studied landscape painting and bird-and-flower painting, and even drew every character in a Chinese dictionary.

Around 2000, Xing moved to Shanghai, hoping for more opportunities. It turned out to be the right decision. In 2001, he went to Singapore and started creating English versions of the art. English letters seemed simple but were challenging because their shapes and meanings are different from Chinese characters.

Later, Xing traveled to many different countries, including the United States, Panama, the United Arab Emirates, France, and the Netherlands. He was also invited to Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia to demonstrate his skills. In 2019, two of his works were collected by the Confucius Institute at the University of Panama.

Around 2020, he returned to Nantong. For him, the craft is no longer a means of livelihood, but a passion and duty. To better protect and pass down this art, he is now collecting materials to apply for local recognition as a district-level intangible cultural heritage item.