Yangjiang Group: Collectivity, Alcohol and Calligraphy from Grassroots
(Hu Fang dialogues with Zheng Guogu)

Collectivity

HF: You display much interest in group creation. Did that directly lead to the forming of Yangjiang group?

ZGG: Yes before the creation of the Yangjiang group, my interior design company also constituted a form of group creation. For instance when we got a job, three of us would discuss how to resolve the project at hand. Or each individual member would make a plan how to deal with the space and how to make it work with the existing architecture. This is easier. We pool our resources. So does the Yangjiang group. We also have discussions and mix several ideas together. I have been accustomed to this way of thinking and working.

HF: Most of Yangjiang Group’s work revolves around the medium of calligraphy, and almost every project has something to do with it. Does it bear any relation to Chen Zaiyan’s background in calligraphic art?

ZGG: Yes in fact, I derive a lot of inspiration from Chen Zaiyan and Sun Qinglin. The biggest influence is a story told by Sun Qinglin. He explained that his great uncle or someone else from the older generation is an illiterate blacksmith. And his neighbor earns a living by selling spring festival couplets. Since his relative was out of work during the spring festival and he sees the couplets selling so well. So he proceeds to buy a few and starts copying the words at home in the hope of doing the same business as his neighbor. It means that an illiterate can also choose calligraphy as his livelihood. My idea that illiterate people have the right to write just comes from this story. I remember when I was young, I felt inferior in writing, because my teachers never encouraged me. They scolded me instead, saying how bad I wrote and telling me to rewrite many times. So I become afraid of words. Sun Qinglin’s story convinces me that I can write too. By coincidence, Chen Zaiyan is well-versed in the traditions and I can make the space to put calligraphy in. This group is perfect because each member has his strong point.

HF: Has Sun Qinglin studied calligraphy?

ZGG: Yes, he always competes with the elders in calligraphy. After drinking all night, Sun Qingxie will go drunk to Yangjiang Park at 5 or 6 in the morning. He will tell the elders, who dip their pens in water to write on the ground and compare with each other, that they all suck and he will do it for them. (He laughs) The elders are all aghast at this youngster who is supposed to lack the knowledge and expertise. However, I think Sun Qinglin did the best job in calligraphy, for he has an innate writing gift. Look at him how he acts when writing. It’s wonderful.

HF: You seem to be stimulated.

ZGG: Yes. The year-long shadow suddenly disappears. The true writing of mine surfaces.

Alcohol

HF: The creation by Yangjiang group seems to have close relationship with alcohol.

ZGG: We all drink and I’ve been drinking with them for several years. Sometimes we are so drunk that our memory no longer serves us and then we return to calligraphy. When we go there to have a look at the work the following evening, we keep finding one more piece on the wall that we cannot remember. This has happened innumerable times. Sometimes, we even write all over the car.

HF: The state that you are in with the group is quite different from the creation of your own, like your painting and photography.

ZGG: Yes, but that has nothing to do with the state of being drunk. The drunkenness is not what we search out. We look for something related to writing. But to explain, I need to tell you about another man. I found a totally crazy one on the street below where I live, who may be the colleague of “my teacher”. He writes everyday and the words are all over the street.

HF: Does he write on the ground?

ZGG: Yes, and the words differ every time I look down. I don’t know where he finds the white substance that he writes with. What he writes is circle within a circle, or the character “Mi” (Rice) with a circle and other things, some inexplicable signs. He writes all over the street. Sometimes he comes out in the dead of night. One time, I found him writing at four or five on one morning.

HF: So you pat him on the shoulder?

ZGG: Yes! I’ll keep a distance from him when I’m sober. Being drunk allowed me to see this man who was often sleeping under the tree and also to connect with the state he is in. And because of that I now have one more….

HF: …another “teacher” of yours?

ZGG: Yeah! (He laughs.) But this is my calligraphy teacher. But I found him a couple of years ago and he was destined to be my inspiration.

Calligraphy

ZGG: The Yangjiang Group enters into the world of calligraphy more as an act of dissidence.

HF: Is this the same attitude as you took in your early photography?

ZGG: That is the way images operate. I hold different opinions toward them. I’ll oppose the ruling power no matter what it says: If it says images should concern the public life, then I’m back home taking photographs. If it says images should concern the people, then will be making models. We look at calligraphy in the same way. I feel quite absurd in front of the ten golden rules of calligraphy. For example, it stipulates that a single character is standard. Then we’ll copy the newspaper and write one passage. It says that the characters should be correct and orderly, and then we’ll make them unruly. All in all, we’re dissidents. If they think calligraphy should have rules, we’ll say “is there calligraphy beyond calligraphy?”

HF: Actually, no rule is the rule?

ZGG: Absolutely right. I think the so-called orthodoxy of calligraphy is just a kind of curse. For instance, you should write as Zhang Xu or Huai Su when you copy the fleeting hand, and you should write as Wang Xizhi when you learn Lantingji. Unconsciously you have no way to escape from the limitations. However, if I ask a mechanic to write, his kind of handwriting is unique in the history of calligraphy. Suddenly it dawns on us that there may be a ray of hope if calligraphy belongs to the grassroots. It doesn’t mean we have to take it to same level as the big figures in calligraphic history, write till we are fifty of sixty and reach a high degree of professional skill. It makes no sense to rival the great calligraphists from the past. It’s more meaningful to place calligraphy in the “cheap” contemporary writing.

HF: And the contents in handwriting are mostly from the mass media and popular culture.

ZGG: Like newspapers and daily things. I think it’s an escape from the tradition. Our aim is to leave all the limitations and inhibitions behind and to have no relationship with the tradition. The grass-roots style, which is opposed and deemed vulgar by the traditionalists, is exactly what we are mostly concerned with. For example, a bankrupt vendor needs to sell clothes and he will write “final reduction, everything must go” with a brush. Though he’s not a calligraphist, he needs to write these characters and convey the messages, using his heartfelt words to attract buyers. I think the immediacy of the situation is what makes them write the words naturally. If you put it in the context of calligraphy, it would be quite fresh and new. So I say, everybody has the rights to write.

HF: You mention the urgency of expression and the fact no one will care if the problems become pressing.

ZGG: No one will care whether it’s good-looking or not. They’re sending a message. But compared to traditional calligraphy, you’ll also discover aesthetics in it because no one ever did it quite that way before.

HF: It can explain your state you were in when you made The Life and Dreams of Yangjiang Youthor The Vagarious Life of Yangjiang Youth series. It’s related to the urgent needs at that time. You witnessed, lived and discovered the lives of people in various sub-cultures around your brother.
ZGG: I think it’s quite creative when the youth develop their own sub-cultures. What they did was strong and they were in a state of healthy creativity to me.

Contribution to China Welcomes You…Desires, Struggles, New Identities, Edited by Peter Pakesch, Published by Kunsthaus Graz, 2007, pp.86-90