Post by Evan Y Hacker 何艾文

My Chinese calligraphy teacher was an expert. Then he discovered I was left-handed. He later admitted he had no idea how to teach a left-handed student. We gave it a shot anyway. I signed up to learn Chinese calligraphy. Instead, he introduced me to 甲骨文 (oracle bone script), a writing system more than 3,000 years old. But I was still very much struggling with modern Chinese. So there I was. A left-handed American trying to write ancient Chinese. To his credit, my teacher remained patient. To my credit, I managed to produce something that vaguely resembled writing. Years later, I still laugh when I look at this photo. I can’t read any of what I wrote. To be fair, I couldn’t read it when I wrote it either.