Chapter 88: The Awards Ceremony

The award ceremony for the calligraphy contest was staged with great solemnity. Because this year marked the tenth anniversary of Binhai City’s middle school calligraphy competition, both the opening and the cultural performances were exceptionally splendid.

As the heart of the ceremony, the awards presentation was naturally even more lively and highly anticipated.

All the winning students and team teachers from Binhai City’s middle schools had already gathered in the auditorium. Sitting together, they exchanged old stories and laughed over this year’s amusing episodes from the competition.

“Director Jiang, I heard Yang Tian from First Middle School injured his right hand. It looks like he won’t be able to perform today. The first place should belong to our school’s Wu Ping, right?” Liu Hua, the head of student affairs at Second Middle School, leaned toward Jiang Nan, deputy director of the Cultural Bureau, and asked with a smile.

“Yang Tian is injured? Who said that? Isn’t he sitting right there?” Jiang Nan exclaimed in surprise. He had been watching Yang Tian closely and had already spotted him in the crowd below.

“But don’t you see his right arm is clearly much thicker than his left? He got into a motorcycle collision a few days ago, and his right arm has been swollen for nearly half a month!” Liu Hua said with an especially bright smile. If Yang Tian did not perform well today, then first place would belong to Wu Ping of Second Middle School. Second Middle School had never before tasted the vanity of taking first place; this time, at last, they would get their wish.

“What? Yang Tian is injured? Then we must give him special consideration, otherwise this competition won’t be fair!” As soon as Chang Qing, an experienced calligraphy scholar from the Cultural Bureau, heard the news, he hurried over and said loudly.

“How could that be? Everything must follow the rules. Surely we can’t change the competition’s regulations just for one person?” Liu Hua replied with a sidelong glance, his face all calculation and opportunism.

“Let’s see how it goes first. It’s already come to this point; there’s no time left!” Jiang Nan sighed deeply. Though he very much wanted to help Yang Tian, the ceremony had already begun. They could not possibly halt it now and postpone it.

The awards ceremony soon began. The top five students in the preliminary ranking were invited onto the stage to perform their calligraphy together by rewriting their awarded works.

When it was seen that the preliminarily ranked first, Yang Tian, still had a white bandage wrapped around his right hand, gasps rose from below at once. Bao Yuehong and Huang Juan were both seated among the audience, each wearing a tense expression, especially Huang Juan, whose anxiety was mixed with deep guilt.

If not for protecting her, Yang Tian would never have ended up like this.

If Yang Tian failed to win first place, he would surely be heartbroken. First place did not matter much to him, but because of his grandfather, it had suddenly become extraordinarily important. That was why Huang Juan felt so guilty and self-reproachful.

And when Wu Ping, ranked second in the preliminaries, saw Yang Tian, he wore a radiant smile. Had he cared less about appearances, he would have loved to mock Yang Tian thoroughly. With Yang Tian unable to perform, first place was already his.

Yang Tian paid no attention to any of this. He merely stared intently at the xuan paper before him and the writing brush in his hand.

This brush was not the one he usually used; it had been left behind by his grandfather. Since he had begun practicing calligraphy despite his injury, he had been using the brush his grandfather had left him.

Whenever he saw Yang Qingtang’s brush, his desire to practice would burn all the stronger, so he brought it to the finals and resolved to bring out his full level.

The applause below was thunderous, but he did not deliberately listen. In his mind, he kept recalling the essentials of Yan-style calligraphy that his grandfather had taught him while alive.

Solid bones in form, bold yet graceful in spirit. Yang Tian remembered Yang Qingtang once saying that writing was like being a person: so long as one cultivated a broad mind and a vigorous spirit, one could surely produce the grand and majestic style of Yan calligraphy.

And if one wished for a lively spirit in the writing, Yang Qingtang’s secret was to infuse it with feeling. That was why Yang Tian wrote Dream Without End. He had been reborn for the sake of fulfilling a dream; the pursuit of dreams in his heart, the yearning to make them come true, was so intense and sincere that it could easily flow into every stroke and every line.

“The middle school calligraphy performance begins now!” At the host’s shout, the audience erupted in applause, and the students onstage immediately began to move their brushes. Only Yang Tian did not yet write; he stood there quietly.

Seeing this, Jiang Nan and the others on the judges’ bench, along with Huang Juan and the rest below, all grew worried. In truth, they knew that even if Yang Tian did not perform at his best, he was still unquestionably first. His writing was not something any other child could compare with.

Wu Ping, standing nearby, saw that Yang Tian had still not lifted his brush and immediately laughed aloud, almost finishing his High Mountains and Flowing Water.

The applause below quickly fell silent. The entire auditorium became so quiet that not a sound could be heard. Everyone was watching Yang Tian. Why had the preliminarily ranked first not yet begun to write?

Those who did not know the situation thought he was stage-struck or too nervous. More people, however, were worried on his behalf. His Dream Without End had been written so beautifully, praised by everyone; if he failed to take the final first place, it would be a terrible pity.

At that moment, everyone held their breath, because Yang Tian had finally begun to write. He wrote very slowly, but once the first character appeared, a wave of exclamations swept through the hall.

Because Yang Tian not only could write, but the characters he produced were even better than his contest entry. The subtle interior precision and the vast outward grandeur of Yan-style calligraphy were brought out by him to the fullest.

By the time Yang Tian finished the second character, Chang Qing on the judges’ bench could not help but cry out, “Marvelous! No one can match this writing except Old Li!”

The other judges also applauded in succession, while Wu Ping and Liu Hua and the others stood there dumbfounded, their expressions darkening. Seeing Yang Tian already drenched in sweat yet still able to write so well, they felt deeply displeased. What a freak. He was absolutely a freak.

When Yang Tian finished the fourth character, Chang Qing on the judges’ bench actually stood up and shouted his praise. In an instant, everyone in the venue rose to their feet, cheering one after another, and the entire auditorium thundered with applause.

After the judges’ scoring, the final results of the championship round were announced. Yang Tian held onto first place by a vast margin, while Wu Ping of Second Middle School lost second place. Second place was taken by Li Qin from Binhai City No. 16 Middle School, who had been fifth in the preliminary ranking.

Wu Ping did not even manage third; he came in fourth. Astonishingly, sixth place belonged to Xu Jie of Victory Middle School.

In his acceptance speech, Xu Jie actually said that it was seeing Yang Tian’s writing in the school auditorium that first awakened his interest in calligraphy. After two years of copying and study, he had finally achieved today’s result.

His writing truly did resemble Yang Tian’s. When Yang Tian was in the second year of junior high, Xu Jie was still in the first year. One day, he suddenly saw Yang Tian’s entry from the 1995 calligraphy contest, Dream-Fulfilling Life, displayed in the school auditorium, and his passion for calligraphy ignited at once. Since then, he had practiced day and night, fixed on those four characters of Yang Tian’s, and had made some modest progress.

This was Xu Jie’s first time participating in the calligraphy contest. He had won second place in the eastern division and sixth place in the finals. Normally, sixth place would not have been given a chance to speak onstage, but because of his special connection with the first-place winner, the host granted him this opportunity.

“Classmate Yang Tian, you’re still so young, yet you can write such excellent characters. Truly remarkable! I heard you learned your writing from your grandfather. Is that true?” After Yang Tian became the center of attention onstage and finished his acceptance speech, the host interviewed him separately.

“Yes. But my writing is different from my grandfather’s. Yan-style calligraphy emphasizes strength and spirit. Put simply, the writing must contain feeling. What I have is the passion of our generation’s pursuit of freedom and dreams, while what my grandfather had was the older generation’s remembrance of those classic years. The spirit differs, but the emotions are equally sincere. One day, I will let everyone here, and all the people of Binhai, see my grandfather’s writing and the true Yang family Yan-style calligraphy.”

After saying this, Yang Tian felt a great lightness in his heart, and the applause below continued for a long, long time.