[MUSIC] So dear friends, at last, the fourth treasure of the Chinese studio, the calligraphic paper. The tradition of producing paper lives in China for almost 2000 years already. And some kinds of these paper are being produced for more than 1000. And these species, these kinds of paper are still being produced and you can go to a shop and buy. For instance, [FOREIGN], a special kind of paper used for calligraphy and painting that has a tradition of more than 1000 years of production. So today, of course, we won't be of speaking about all kinds of calligraphic papers because that's a never-ending story. We will just outline some most important things that can be useful for you in your training. And then what shall we do for the beginning, what paper shall we choose for our training in writing characters? Well, first of all, it shouldn't be the normal office paper as we use in printers and things. It is very wrong to train calligraphy using this kind of paper. It doesn't absorb ink as it should, it has absolutely different feeling while you write on it. So just please forget it and never do, never choose this office paper for your calligraphic training. In China, there are special kinds of paper for the training. They must be, of course, much cheaper than professional kinds of paper for calligraphy. But still, they must have some features that the professional paper also does. So that while training, you will be working out the proper feelings, the proper mechanics of working with the brush and with ink. The professional kinds of paper are numerous. This already mentioned [FOREIGN] or the [FOREIGN] paper is the most prominent and the most expensive. It is very smooth, but being smooth it is not slippery. Excuse me for this word, I don't know how to explain it. It is smooth, but it still is very well felt when you write on it. It is rather thin, but at the same time, when you look at it thoroughly and look through it, you would see sorts of clouds inside of the paper. This cloud form makes the paper being dense, it is very dense and it absorbs very well. The [FOREIGN] paper, it has a very big percentage of the real sandal tree bark. And all this makes [FOREIGN] paper absolutely unique and perfect for calligraphy and for drawing. So when you write on it, the strokes become very deep at look, they become very strong. They actually seem perfectly on the paper, so it is perfect for the work with ink. Of course, simple variants for training, they're different. This kind of paper we have already used during our classes when we showed you how to write the elementary strokes and the radicals number one to seven. So we used this kind of paper. It also is sort of dense, It is very plastic. And it has those kinds of clouds, of course, not that big. So when we look at it, it has those things resembling those cotton clouds in the very dense, in the very center of the paper. And it is smooth, it is very smooth, so it is very pleasant to write on. But of course, it is far simpler than the professional kinds of paper. And of course, it is far away cheaper. So this kind of paper is very good and it is perfect for training. The only obstacle is that mostly it is available in China in special shops for calligraphy, while these kinds of paper can be found abroad as well. Like this, it is already checked, it is already squared and with all these horizontal lines in the center to place the character, so it's already prepared. But of course, the quality of this paper is far worse than the previous one. So I wouldn't recommend you to use this kind of paper. But if it's the only option, then okay. But nevertheless, there are other ways to find the material for your training, we'll speak about it a little bit later. During last years, the new fashion has emerged. Now they produce this kind of paper that doesn't need ink to write on. It is rather thick paper, a special kind of paper that you can write with water. You can write with water on it, and everything you write can be well seen and is absolutely obvious what you write and how you write. After that, it dries and you can use it again. So this very special sort of paper is also very popular and has been popular during the last decades. Or sometimes they using this sort of a mat that also you can write with water on. And that also dries afterwards and you can use it again and again. But frankly, to choose the right sort of a paper, you'd better look for some technical sorts of paper that sometimes are used for wrapping something inside, for those things, for gluing something, well, from above. These kinds of paper sometimes are very good for the work with the ink. The old newspapers, that newspapers that were produced like three, four decades ago, I mean, 30, 40 years ago. They were very, very good for calligraphy training. Now they're using some new kind of paper for these newspapers, and the new kind of paper is not good for training at all. So the paper can be found. And again, it must be rather smooth, it must be plastic and dense, it must absorb ink very well, that's the main things that the training paper must have. As to the professional paper, there are dozens, even hundreds of different kinds of it. It can be this [FOREIGN], the [FOREIGN] paper. The [FOREIGN] paper is perfect for calligraphy, but there are other ways. There are other kinds of professional paper that are resembling the [FOREIGN] paper. When you choose the professional paper, you must mind, you must keep in your mind that the good paper must not be very white. If it is too white, it means that something is wrong with it, that something has been done to whiten it too much, and perhaps it wouldn't be that good for writing. There are colored kinds of paper, there are professional checked paper, there are papers with ornaments and things. It's a universe of itself, and of course, we don't have time for discussing all that. And of course, you won't be needing all this at the beginning. So at the beginning, you need this training paper to just train if you want to get the feeling how traditionally the characters were written.
