Evelyn is from Hungary, studying calligraphy and Chinese painting in China.
Her calligraphy starts stroke by stroke: straight horizontals and verticals, graceful flicks. She loves writing characters like "福", "和", "家", saying every Chinese character is a picture.
Evelyn also learns Chinese painting: bamboo, plum blossoms, landscapes. The "negative space" and "artistic conception" of Chinese painting, she says, are beauties absent from Western art.
Calligraphy and painting quiet her mind and deepen her understanding of China, she says. From Budapest to China, she found inner peace in brush, ink, paper and inkstone.
Evelyn is a Hungarian girl studying calligraphy and Chinese painting in China, starting a journey of Eastern aesthetics with brush, ink, paper and inkstone.
Her choice: enchanted by a calligraphy exhibition in Budapest, she came to China to apprentice - from regular script basics to running script, bamboo to landscape painting.
Content: "a Hungarian girl day 200 of calligraphy", "Chinese painting basics: drawing bamboo", "learning with a national-painting teacher" - her brush growth.
Going viral: her "Hungarian girl writes Spring Festival couplets" video spread - her "fú" was pasted on a neighbour door; she beamed: "my first honorary certificate in China."
Insights: "calligraphy taught me Chinese beauty is practised - every stroke demands patience."
Significance: she represents Westerners studying Chinese brush arts - showing the cultural resonance between ink and cultures.
Plans: a calligraphy exhibition in Budapest, letting Hungarians see her bamboos and landscapes.
For readers: her videos make you want to pick up a brush - her ink scent crosses borders.
She does something ceremonial: keeping every "yǒng" character she has written since starting calligraphy - over a hundred now. "The eight strokes of yǒng are my pact with Chinese brush and ink." Her favourite character is jìng (stillness) - "writing jìng really calms my heart." Her Chinese teacher says calligraphy trains not just characters but the person character. "I increasingly believe this." She plans to complete a copy of the Lanting Preface within five years.
To everyone learning brush arts: "do not fear ugly writing or poor painting - the brush sees your persistence." She herself went from crooked to presentable. She is preparing a painting for her teacher: the Danube from her homeland, and bamboo outside the teacher window. "Two rivers, two bamboos - both beautiful." Her story witnesses Eastern ink meeting a Western heart.
"Inside brush and ink lives the Chinese heart" - with one brush she slowly approaches it.
"Hungary has Liszt, China has the guqin - two rivers of music flow to the same sea."
"Master says I have potential; I think she teaches well" - she wrote it on rice paper.
"Brush and ink are friends for life; I will keep writing."
