Pi Pa Xing 琵琶行 （用草書寫長卷，卷長十公尺，濶四十公分）

Today I'm going to share with you a piece which has a very special place in my heart, and of which I'm very proud.

Last year I saw this 10m(!) scroll which came in its own beautiful jacquard box and thought I had to have it. I decided to record Bai Juyi's "Pi Pa Xing" poem on this scroll in my signature cursive style. This was a very challenging task I set myself, as there was no way I could work out how the poem would fit into the 10m space.
While I was a bit apprehensive to start off with, the more I wrote, the more at one I felt with this piece. In the end, I completed this piece in one session just short of 3 hours, and I used up the space of the full scroll, no more, no less, perfect! I think the flow and strength are self evident.

Bai Juyi was a famous Chinese poet from the Tang Dynasty. Shortly after Bai Juyi was demoted from a capital official to become an officer in thel local prefecture, he was seeing off a friend on the Yangtze River when he came across a lady playing the pipa on a nearby boat. The piece of music she was playing clearly came from the capital, so he decided to find out about the lady. The lady relayed to him her life story of being once famous in the capital and then her fall from fame as her beauty faded, which caused Bai Juyi to reflect on his own demotion and write this poem about the ups and downs of life.
去年在坊間購得罝於錦盒內的精裝長卷，遂決定書寫唐白居易的琵琶行長詩。初落筆時頗為猶豫，因長卷買回來時已裱妥，如有錯漏或最後不能把內容全部容納，豈不報銷?惟最後大着膽子落筆，怎知越寫越順，一氣呵成，不消三小時已將全詩616字及135字白居易的自序寫完，最難得是寫到最末竟全無虛位，結構真完整。
唐朝詩人白居易在元和十年（公元815年）送友人到湓浦口江邊，聞船中有彈琵琶的婦人、婦人道出其身世，在掩抑的琵琶聲中，詩人體味到人世浮沉的滄涼，而自覺有天涯淪落人的情況，因而寫了這首長詩相贈。