Custom Brevity Fewer Words Are Better Chinese & Japanese Calligraphy Wall Scroll
We have many options to create artwork with Brevity Fewer Words Are Better characters on a wall scroll or portrait. If you want to create a cool Brevity tattoo, you can purchase that on our Chinese and Japanese Tattoo Image Service page and we'll help you select from many forms of ancient Asian symbols that express the idea of brevity.
Get to the point quickly with the fewest words possible is the suggestion of this Chinese proverb. But taking it deeper, there is a warning that using too many words may act to "tip your hat" or "show your hand" (to use two American idioms).
It can also be said that using many words does not make the message have more value.
This phrase is really about the art of brevity.
Now my only hope is that I did not use too many words to explain this phrase.
Brief and to the point
Speak simply, while expressing your idea completely
yán jiǎn yì gāi
This Chinese idiom is a suggestion that is it better to be brief, use fewer words, while still expressing your main point or idea. In another way to explain this, one should not use 100 words when 50 will do, Or, being more concise with your speech.
This can also be translated as concise, compendious, "brief in form but comprehensive in scope" or succinct.
This is a bit more positive than our other idiom for brevity.
Strength and Love in Unity
(Japanese only)
riki ai fu ni
This phrase literally means:
"Strength [and] Love [are] Not Two [separate ideas/concepts/things]".
You'll find this phrase translated from Japanese to English as:
Love and strength are not separate.
Power and love are indivisible.
Strength and love in harmony.
Strength and love stand together.
Old Japanese grammar is quite different than English, and so this phrase says a lot within the brevity of just 4 characters. If you just read these characters directly as, "Strength Love Not Two", you'd probably miss the real meaning.
This post really explains the concept best in my opinion: Bushido by MS: Riki Ai Fu Ni, which states: "Riki Ai Funi" is the philosophy that power (Riki) and love (Ai) are indivisible. More concretely, a person, who is powerful but does not have love, cannot control and misuse his/her power; on the other hand, a person, who has loved ones but is not powerful enough, cannot protect himself/herself nor loved ones.
All of our calligraphy is completely done by hand in the ancient way.
When the calligrapher finishes creating your artwork, it is taken to our art mounting workshop in Beijing where a wall scroll is made by hand from a combination of silk, rice paper, and wood.
After we create your wall scroll, it takes at least two weeks for air mail delivery from Beijing to you.
Therefore, allow a few weeks for delivery from the time you place your order. Rush options are available!
When you select your calligraphy, you'll be taken to another page where you can choose various custom options.
The scroll that I am holding in this picture is a "medium size" 4-character wall scroll. As you can see, it is a great size to hang on your wall. (We also offer custom wall scrolls in larger sizes)
Professional calligraphers are getting to be hard to find these days. Instead of drawing characters by hand, the new generation in China merely type roman letters into their computer keyboards and pick the character that they want from a list that pops up.
There is some fear that true Chinese calligraphy may become a lost art in the coming years. Many art institutes in China are now promoting calligraphy programs in hopes of keeping this unique form
of art alive.
Even with the teachings of a top-ranked calligrapher in China, my calligraphy will never be good enough to sell. I will leave that to the experts.
The same calligrapher who gave me those lessons also
attracted a crowd of thousands and a TV crew as he created characters over
6-feet high. He happens to be ranked as one of the top 100 calligraphers
in all of China. He is also one of very few that would actually attempt
such a feat.
The following table is only helpful for those studying Chinese (or Japanese), and perhaps helps search engines to find this page when someone enters Romanized Chinese or Japanese
If you have not set up your computer to display Chinese, the characters in this table probably look like empty boxes or random text garbage.
This is why I spent hundreds of hours making images so that you could view the characters in the "Brevity Fewer Words Are Better" listings above.
If you want your Windows computer to be able to display Chinese characters you can either head to your Regional and Language options in your Win XP control panel, select the [Languages] tab and click on [Install files for East Asian Languages]. This task will ask for your Win XP CD to complete in most cases. If you don't have your Windows XP CD, or are running Windows 98, you can also download/run the simplified Chinese font package installer from Microsoft which works independently with Win 98, ME, 2000, and XP. It's a 2.5MB download, so if you are on dial up, start the download and go make a sandwich.
