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All custom calligraphy items are made-to-order in our little Beijing artwork-mounting workshop.
Buy an Adapt and Overcome calligraphy wall scroll here!
Start your custom "Adapt and Overcome" project by clicking the button next to your favorite "Adapt and Overcome" title below...


This literally translates as: Troops/soldiers/warriors have no fixed [battlefield] strategy [just as] water has no constant shape [but adapts itself to whatever container it is in].
Figuratively, this means: One should seek to find whatever strategy or method is best suited to resolving each individual problem.
This proverb is about as close as you can get to the military idea of "adapt improvise overcome". This is best way to express that idea in both an ancient way, and a very natural way in Chinese.


This is, "the ability to take proper steps to meet the situation", "the ability to adapt oneself to the requirement of the moment", "the ability to adapt to circumstances", or "adapt and overcome", in Japanese Kanji.


This means, "to meet a contingency", "to adapt oneself to changes", or "to adapt to changes" in Chinese. It's also used in Japanese, but usually only in the context of Buddhism. This is probably the shortest way to express the idea of adapting and overcoming whatever circumstances present themselves.


This is the Japanese Buddhist and martial arts phrase, "mizu no kokoro", which means, "mind like water" or "heart of water".
The phrase is a metaphor describing the pond that clearly reflects it’s surroundings when calm, but whose images are obscured once a pebble is dropped into its waters.
All of our calligraphy is completely done by hand in the ancient way.
When the calligrapher finishes creating your artwork, it is taken to my 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.
If your search is not successful, just post your request on our forum, and we'll be happy to do research or translation for any reasonable request.
Successful Chinese Character and Japanese Kanji calligraphy searches within the last few hours...
With so many searches, we had to upgrade to our own Linux server.
Of course, only one in 500 searches results in a purchase - Hey buy a wall scroll!!!
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
| Title | Characters Simplified Traditional | Japanese Romaji (Romanized Japanese) | Various forms of Romanized Chinese | |
| Warriors Adapt and Overcome | 兵无常势水无常形 兵無常勢水無常形 | n/a | bīng wú cháng shì shuǐ wú cháng xíng bing wu chang shi shui wu chang xing ping wu ch`ang shih shui wu ch`ang hsing | bing1 wu2 chang2 shi4 shui3 wu2 chang2 xing2 ping wu chang shih shui wu chang hsing |
| Ability to Adapt | 応変能力 応変能力 | ouhen nouryoku ouhennouryoku ohen noryoku | n/a | |
| Adapt Oneself | 应变 應變 | ou hen ouhen o hen | yìng biàn ying bian ying pien | ying4 bian4 yingbian |
| Mind Like Water | 水の心 水の心 | mizu no kokoro mizunokokoro | n/a | |
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 "adapt and overcome" 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.
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