Beautiful handwriting by Vietnamese girl becomes an Internet sensation in China

On October 11th, an illustrated Weibo post shared by Meng Ruisen, a teacher from the International Education College, Guangxi University, became a hit. Several photos of  a composition written by one of his students have attracted considerable attention.

10月11日，广西大学国际教育学院孟瑞森老师发布的一条配图微博火了。孟老师把他所教授班级的一名学生的作文发到网上，引起了大量的关注。

What shocks the netizens is not the content of the composition but the extremely beautiful handwriting, which looks very similar to printed text, being neat and powerful.  What's more astonishing is that the handwriting comes from an overseas student from Vietnam, who has learnt Chinese for only 13 months in China.

令网友们感到惊讶的不是这名同学的作文写得好，而是她的字写得实在太漂亮，每一个字都整整齐齐，笔锋有力，字体纤长秀丽，与书本里的印刷字体十分相似。更让人感到惊叹的是，这些美丽的汉字均出自一名越南留学生之手，而且她学写汉字的时间仅有短短的13个月。

Mr. Meng revealed how he asked his students to write a composition by imitating Friends: The Four Categories, a masterpiece by Yu Guangzhong (余光中, a famous Chinese writer and poet). The homework was handed in the next day, and the composition entitled Books: The Four Categories by Li Shishui caught his eye. "Her handwriting is very beautiful and all the sentences are well written. There are just a few mistakes", says Mr. Meng. He couldn't help posting the pictures of the composition online, and it got numerous likes and comments. But there are also some doubts that this composition is not written by Li or it is probably copied from a copybook of calligraphy.

孟老师告诉记者，这篇作文是9月30日布置的，当时汉语课学到了作家余光中的《朋友四型》，孟老师便要求班上20多名留学生按照该文结构，模仿写一篇作文。10月10日，当作业收上来后，越南留学生黎氏水的文章《书籍四型》令孟老师眼前一亮。“因为她的字写得实在是太好了，句子通顺，错字也很少。”孟老师说，他忍不住就把黎氏水的文章发到了网上。许多网友纷纷点赞并评论。不过，也有部分网友对此质疑，认为这篇作文很可能不是这名留学生本人写的，或者是把纸压在字帖上临摹出来的。

To address the doubts from the netizens, the journalist from Modern Life Daily had an interview with Li Shishui and gave her a face-to-face Chinese characters writing test. Li Shishui was asked to write some words for the readers of this newspaper. She wrote around 100 hundred Chinese character, neatly and correctly.

为了消除网友们的质疑，《当代生活报》记者采访了黎氏水本人，并当面验证她的书写水平。记者请黎氏水现场为本报读者写一段话。一段100来字的寄语很快跃然纸上，依旧工工整整，风格端正。

What's more astonishing is that the Vietnamese girl is not only good at hard-pen calligraphy, but also at brush calligraphy.

通过现场验证，黎氏水的钢笔字确实写得很好，但让记者更为惊叹的是，她的毛笔字同样写得颇有水准。

"First, I learned to write by watching teaching videos online", said Li, as she was showing the journalist videos stored in her cell phone. The videos are calligraphy training courses by Tian Yingzhang, a highly respected calligrapher, the first president of Chinese hard-pen calligraphy Association. Li said she has finished all the videos and  keeps practicing according to the training course every day.

“一开始我是自己在网上看教学视频学的。”黎氏水说着，打开手机给记者看存在里面的视频资料，这20多集书法培训教程视频都是书法家田英章的。田英章是中国硬笔书法协会首任会长，在书法界德高望重。黎氏水说，这些视频她全部看完了，每天就按照视频中的培训内容从头到尾一一练习。

"Practice makes perfect", she continues. Over the past one year, she has practiced writing Chinese characters for more than 2 hours every day.

她接着说，其实最重要的还是勤加练习。这一年来，她都跟着视频勤加练习，每天通常要写2个小时以上。

Translated from: Modern Life Daily

译自《当代生活报》