Dear Toni-Lee,
I've a mild case of Asperger's, so I'm sort of 'hard-wired' to tell the truth; as Monk says, "It's a blessing but also a curse".
But once, when I was stopped for speeding, the policeman told me I was going 108 km/hr. in a 95 km/hr. stretch of highway. I corrected him to say I'd been actually going 120 and had slowed down! He said it was the first time ANY driver had corrected him upward, and asked why I was speeding.
I replied that my big brother had landed from Toronto and I didn't want him to wait. The policeman said that another few km. onward, on the airport -Jerusalem direction, was a horrible accident with 6 or 7 dead, and if I got into such an accident, my brother would not only wait, he might have to go to a funeral.
He said to think about that, and not to go over 5 km over the listed speed limit (100 instead of 95). He also let me off with just a warning. Since, I've not gone more than 10% over, and usually I drive at the limit, not over.
I looked at your bottle again, and you bought it in 1978 or later; I know because it is dated with the cyclical date 'wu wu', or 1978 (or 1918 or 2038, neither of which it could be
).
Lishu is called 'Clerical Script'. It was a more monumental style of calligraphy with certain strokes accentuated bolder, and considered suitable for monumental inscriptions on public steles. Chen Runpu's Lishu is very good as well.
A lot of the modern artists have very poor calligraphic skills, since these were looked down upon for part of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Notice that your bottle was painted after 1976, when he could again sign his name. Many bottles during the period of the CR were signed with only the Studio name. I have bottles signed 'Yi Hu Zhai' or "One Bottle studio". This was the studio of Wang Xisan and his students from 1972.
Whether 'Beginner's Luck' or a 'Good Eye' (And I tend to the latter, after seeing a number of your bottles),
a beauty.
Best,
Joey
