In recent years, Chinese calligraphy has been mass-produced on T-shirts, utensils, decorative art, etc. all over the world, but more often as a fad than as a result of sincere, constructive cross-cultural learning. Cross-cultural understanding suffers from ideological disconnections; the study of Chinese calligraphy is no exception. How can we channel and direct American students’ growing interest in China and how can we facilitate trans-cultural understanding of shared humanity present a challenge. This paper examines the film Hero focusing on the constructed relationship between the art of Chinese calligraphy and its cognitive and ethical potential as a means to convey meaning. It argues that aesthetic learning, practice, and understanding of Chinese calligraphy provide a way to meet the challenge.
            In the film, the master calligrapher said to his students when they were being bombarded by arrows from the Qin army: “‘You must all remember: the arrows of Qin may be powerful; they may penetrate our cities and destroy our kingdom; but they can never annihilate our written words! Today you will all learn the true spirit of our art.’”
            In my class, I often use this as an example. A reflective response from my students was: “This issue is ultimately one of free speech.” A student interpreted the master’s insistence on continuing the practice session during the downpour of lethal arrows as an effort to “preserve one’s ability to express him/herself.”
            “Why,” I asked, “don’t they die fighting for their self-expression if it is worth dying for?” I froze on the frame of the composed master and added, “Why does the filmmaker go out of his way to represent this non-violent resistance as being so powerful that the storm of arrows can neither reach nor destroy the master practicing it?”
            My students did not quite know how to approach these questions. If the arrow-storm sequence does not spell out the “true spirit of our art,” the film as a whole does. But mediated by their preconception of China, many students read Nameless’s final decision to spare the king’s life as a compliment to China’s political system that propagates stability at all cost: “…regardless of people’s personal beliefs and desires, the need for a stable society outweighs all else.”
               To approach a different understanding of Chinese calligraphy in Hero, I make students examine carefully the sequence of events in the film. They come to realize that what their political interpretation neglects is that Broken Sword’s plea on behalf of “our land,” i.e. “the needs of the many,” failed to convince Nameless to abandon his assassination plan. The proof that the king of Qin was the person to stop wars and the suffering of people came later from the king himself when the art of Broken Sword’s calligraphy led him to this realization:

     “What this [the character “sword” that Broken Sword wrote during the above-mentioned arrow storm] reveals is his [Broken Sword’s] highest ideal. In the first stage, man and sword become one and each other. Here, even a blade of grass can be used as a lethal weapon. In the next stage, the sword resides not in the hand but in the heart. Even without a weapon, the warrior can slay his enemy from a hundred paces. But the ultimate ideal is when the sword disappears all together. The warrior embraced all around him. The desire to kill no longer exists. Only peace remains.”

        Not only are the king’s words on this “ultimate ideal” descriptive of the warrior-calligrapher Broken Sword and the state in which he executed the Chinese character; they are also representative of the king’s own state of being at that very moment: the sword had disappeared from both his hand and his heart; he was so content that finally someone, i.e. Broken Sword, understood his ambition that for him, to live or die no longer mattered. Happily he had thrown his sword in his assassin’s direction and placed his life in his assassin’s hands. The impact of this moment on Nameless is most profound. He changes his mind because he has experienced, with and through the king, a moment of the “ultimate ideal” wherein compassion, trust, and respect outweigh all else. This experience makes him truly understand Broken Sword’s vision/expectation of the king and the prospect of peace in “our land.” The miracle happens when the opponent’s sword disappears all together—the assassin aborts his intent to kill, knowing that doing so will cost him his own life.
        The question to be answered is how the beautiful execution of a Chinese character done with brush and ink could reveal (to the king) the ultimate ideal of peace and lead (the assassin) to the ethical deed of sacrifice. In other words, how does the leap from the appreciation of art to the act based on ethical ideal occur? What is the essence of the aesthetic cognition in Chinese calligraphy that brings about this leap? The answer, I propose, lies in the unity of opposites—the ultimate principle of the art of calligraphy.  

Simplicity                  Complexity
Primeval                    Refined
Monochrome             (Limitless) Nuances
Slow                          Fast
Smooth                      Rough
Impetuous                  Subdued
Naïve                        Cultured
Violent                       Delicate
Wetness                     Dryness
Thickness                   Thinness
Empty space               Occupied Space
Fleshiness                   Boniness
Blackness                   Shades of Gray
Depth of Touch          Lightness of Touch
Naturalness                 Mastery                                
…                                        …

        The art of Chinese calligraphy resides in the dynamic interaction between opposites generated by such elements as the attributes of the brush, the properties of the ink, the features of the paper, the movements of human energy, the level of skills, the physical and emotional states in time and space. On the left is an incomplete table of such opposites that Simon Ley brought up in his 1996 article “One More Art.”  It is the harmonious interactions between these opposites that produce their transformation and lead to their unity, i.e. the creation of superb works of art. Take the art of “leaving blank” for example. As is universally acknowledged, it takes the balance of occupied space and empty space, the perfect complement between them, to achieve the aesthetic beauty of calligraphy.
        The cognitive implication and impact of such aesthetic practice/education is ultimately ethical. It acknowledges a fundamental connection between opposites. It cultivates both a sensibility and a sensitivity that celebrate harmonious interactions between and possible transformations of (seeming) adversaries through unity in beauty. Such aesthetic development is conducive to a non-discriminative ethic that welcomes contradiction and diversity, values empathy, and, simply put, “embraces all.”
        As Cai Yuanpei has taught us, the aesthetic experience of the Tao, i.e. the unity of opposites, can give rise to “a lasting state of peace,” wherein a non-utilitarian concern transcends petty prejudices of categorization and discrimination, and a compassionate perception finds the meaning of the universe in the smallest of particles and “I” in “you,” and vise versa.  It is the aspiration for this “lasting state of peace”—which the calligraphy master in Hero visually embodies and symbolizes—that no violent provocation can disrupt and no weapon of destruction can kill. The strength of this aspiration lies in its potential to awaken the best in all and to comprehend conflicts, competition, and confrontation as complements, compassion, and compromise. Both an effort towards and a consequence of this potential, the final decision of our nameless hero exemplifies the dialectic of the principle—the unity/harmony of the opposites. In death he forever lives the “ultimate ideal.”     

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