自成一体 a style of his own zheng banqiao

江苏省扬州市是我国历史上有名的文化古城。在清朝的时候，这里曾出现不少有名的文学家和书法家： [[ Zheng Banqiao 郑板桥 ]]是其中最有名的。

Yangzhou, in Jiangsu Province, is a city of great historic and cultural significance in China. During the Qing Dynasty, it was home to many a famous writer and calligrapher. Zheng Banqiao was the most famous of them all.

郑板桥从小就喜爱书法，每天都要练字，从不间断。他晚上躺在床上，还经常在被子上、身上用手指练习写字。有一天夜里，忙碌了一天的郑板桥刚刚躺下休息，忽然想起白天看的几本字帖，就用手指在自己的身上练起来。

From a young age, Zheng Banqiao loved calligraphy. He’d practice every day without fail. At night, he’d lie awake in bed, tracing characters on the bedsheets with his finger. One night, Zheng Banqiao lay down to rest after a busy day’s work. Quite unexpectedly, some calligraphy he’d seen that day popped into his mind, and he traced the lines of the characters with his finger on his body.

他划着划着，被一个字的写法难住了。他左想右想，说什么也记不起来。他急躁地翻了个身，又接着划，不知不觉地划到他妻子的身上，妻子被划醒了，知道了他又在练字，就不耐烦地嘟囔【dūnang】着：“一人有一体，你有你的体，要划就在自己身上划嘛，你自己又不是没有体！”

On and on he traced with his finger until suddenly…he forgot one of the characters. He wracked his brain, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember how it was written. Vexed, he tossed and turned, and continued to trace with his finger, but without noticing it, he started tracing on his wife’s body. His tracing woke her up. She knew that he was practising calligraphy again, and muttered under her breath: “You have your body and I have mine, what are you writing on me for, it’s not as if you don’t have a body of your own.”

妻子的这一句话启发了郑板桥。他高兴地说：“对呀！我学书法，为什么非要摹仿前人的风格呢？为什么不写出自己的‘体’来呢？”

His wife’s sleepy reproach inspired Zheng Banqiao. He chuckled to himself: “You’re right! Why should my calligraphy be limited by the styles of the old masters? I need to create my own body of work!”

他兴奋得睡不着觉，又起床练字去了。打这以后，郑板桥更加刻苦练习书法，下定决心非练出自己的字体不可。经过几年的摸索和苦练，他终于练出了形体奇特的字体。

He was too excited to sleep, so he got up to practise calligraphy. From that day on, Zheng Banqiao concentrated more energy on his study of calligraphy, vowing to develop a style of his own. After years of experimentation, he finally matured as a calligrapher with an eccentric style of writing.

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