The write brother

Luo's piece of calligraphic and painting work, titled 12 Beauties of Jinling. [Photo provided to China Daily]

In his live courses, he teaches the theory and history of a particular style of calligraphy first, before demonstrating its technique and answering questions from his students.

Cheng likes the Q&A sessions, which he believes makes the course more like an offline face-to-face learning experience. "He not only teaches the calligraphy technique, but also tells us the stories, history and context of the style of calligraphy we are practicing," says Cheng.

Luo sees his calligraphy courses as a product, which he is always updating and perfecting.

Each year Luo will update the eight-week introduction course for regular script and clerical script separately. To encourage his students to continue practicing calligraphy, he gives all his previous students free access to all future updated versions of the courses they take.

To make his course more attractive and fun, Luo has tried to encourage everyday use of the skills his students learn. "Calligraphy and seal cutting can be applied to our everyday life－a note for your lover or a name tag for your kid can add a little fun and is not too hard to learn," he says.

To help his students to memorize the characters that are unique to clerical script, he finds a way to swap them with the regular Chinese characters in popular song lyrics. This way, his students not only enjoy music, but subliminally learn while doing so.

He now runs courses, including entry and advanced level, in calligraphy, calligraphy appreciation and seal cutting. Luo has also opened an annual course where the students need to practice calligraphy each day.

"Some of the students give up after one course, and I also have many students that return and have gradually turned calligraphy into a regular hobby," Luo says.

He is planning to begin yet another new course in the summer, but from a different perspective－how to do what he does. The course will focus on how to become a professional calligraphy teacher.

Besides running WeChat groups to communicate with his students, he also runs offline events, such as poetry writing sessions at a quadrangle courtyard in Beijing.

Luo was born and raised in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, and he wanted to show his support for the people of his hometown. So, on Jan 24, he held a free course, leading students on a "tour" of the Palace Museum, Beijing, by discussing the calligraphy collection inside the Forbidden City in a Wuhan accent, hoping to offer some light relief for viewers in Hubei.

He is obsessed with the calligraphy collection of the Palace Museums in both Beijing and Taipei. He can recite the story behind almost every piece in the collection of the Palace Museum in Taipei, even though he hasn't even visited.

Despite being taught calligraphy since age 5 by his father, a calligraphy teacher, he did not find his passion for the art form until he majored in the subject at college and now he can't go a day without writing.

"Whenever I practice using a copybook and I produce strokes that happen to be the same as the original calligrapher, I feel like I have opened a conversation with them, which is quite amazing," he says.

Luo has a 5-year-old daughter and one of his motives for making the online courses is that he hopes to accumulate enough experience, to teach his daughter in the future.

"Surprisingly, she holds everything like holding a brush," Luo says.

He hopes his daughter can go on and find a similar passion for calligraphy. "If she can find happiness in this field, it will bring her more pleasure than ordinary games ever can."

Contact the writer at liyingxue@chinadaily.com.cn