蔡邕看碑 cai yong admires a stele

有一次， [[ 蔡邕 Cai Yong ]]出门去办事，在路上看见一座古碑，马上被吸引住了。他停下来看碑文，越看越爱看，自言自语的赞叹说：“这碑文的字写的好！写得真好啊！”

Once, Cai Yong left town to run some errands, on the roadside an ancient stele caught his eye. The stopped to look at the inscription, and the more he looked, the more enthralled he became. He murmured to himself: “The characters of this inscription are so well written! The brushwork is exceptional!”

蔡邕办完了公事，又去看碑文。为了把这种字体的写法学到手，他决定先不回家了，就在附近住下来。他天天去看，边看边想，边看边写；白天看了，晚上回到住处又拿起笔来学着写。就这样不停的看呐，写呀，一转眼，他在这里住了一百天。

After Cai Yong has finished business, he returned to the inscription. He decided not to go home straight away and took lodgings nearby so that he could learn all the intricacies of the characters’ style. Every day he would go to look, looking and thinking, looking and writing. He’d look by day, and by night he would return to his lodgings and continue to take up his brush to write. And so it was, looking and writing, 100 days past, as if in the blink of an eye.

蔡邕离开家三个多月，家里的人都等急了。当他回到家里，说起这件事的时候，女儿 [[ 蔡文姬 Cai Wenji ]]奇怪地问父亲：“一座古碑的碑文，没有多少字，有什么好看的？您为什么要花上一百天学呀？”

Cai Yong was away from home for over three months, naturally his family were worried sick about him. When he did return home and told them about it, his daughter, Cai Wenji mused: “An inscription on an ancient stele! It can’t be very many characters, what was so fascinating about it? Why did you spend 100 days studying it?”

蔡邕笑了笑说：“写字和你平时弹琴一样，也是要有感情的。写字要先放开胸怀，认真的写，一个字有一个字的精神：有的象人走动；有的象鸟飞；有的象动物爬行；有的象人欢笑；有的象虫吃树叶；有的象刀枪出鞘；还有的象水、火、云雾、日、月······

With a chuckle, Cai Yong replied: “Writing is like when you play the qin, you have to do it with feeling. When you write you have to open up your heart and be true to yourself. Each character has a unique spirit: some look like people moving; others like birds flying; some like creatures crawling; others like people laughing; others like insects chewing on the leaves of trees; some are like a blade drawn from its’ scabbard; and others yet look like water, fire, mist, the sun and the moon….

每一种好的字都具有生命的形态。每一个书法家的字也都有他的特点和长处。我这次看的那块古碑上的字，就是一位大书法家的手迹，所以才去反复揣摩，把它学到手。要学好书法，不下功夫是不行的。”

Every good character looks like it’s alive. Each character written by a calligrapher has its own peculiarities and virtues. As soon as I saw the characters on that ancient stele, I knew they were written by the hand of a great calligrapher: that’s why I went back, pondering upon them over and over until I had mastered them. You’ll never be a good calligrapher unless you work hard.

文姬听了父亲的话，明白了写字和弹琴一样，需要用心去学，才能写好的道理。后来，她也专心的学习书法，成了一位书法家。

Wenji remembered her fathers’ words and understood that writing is like playing an instrument, you need to practice mindfully if you want to make progress. Later, she concentrated her efforts on calligraphy and became a calligrapher.

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