250px, One of Huai Su's surviving works
Huaisu (, 737–799),
courtesy name
A courtesy name (), also known as a style name, is a name bestowed upon one at adulthood in addition to one's given name. This practice is a tradition in the East Asian cultural sphere, including China
China, officially the People's R ...
Zangzhen (), was a
Buddhist monk and
calligrapher
Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as " ...
of the
Tang Dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdo ...
, famous for his
cursive calligraphy. Fewer than 10 pieces of his works have survived. One of his representative works is
Huai Su's Autobiography
''Huaisu's'' ''Autobiography'' () is a representative Chinese calligraphy work written by the renowned Tang dynasty Chinese calligrapher Huaisu in 777 AD. It is often considered today to be one of the best written Cursive script (East Asia), cursi ...
.
He was born in modern
Changsha, Hunan. Not much is known of his early life. His secular
surname may have been Qian (). It is possible that Huaisu was a nephew of the poet
Qian Qi
Qian Qi (; 710–782) was a Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty. Three of his poems have been included within the famous anthology ''Three Hundred Tang Poems''. His courtesy name was Zhongwen ().
Poetry
Qian Qi's poems as collected in ''Three Hundred ...
(). He became a monk in his childhood, apparently out of poverty.
Legend has it that he planted
banana
A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry (botany), berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa (genus), Musa''. In some countries, Cooking banana, bananas used for ...
trees (or any genus of trees under
Musaceae
Musaceae is a family of flowering plants composed of three genera with about 91 known species, placed in the order Zingiberales. The family is native to the tropics of Africa and Asia. The plants have a large herbaceous growth habit with leaves w ...
) in the courtyard of the temple he lived, and used the leaves as paper to practice his a
