We have many options to create artwork with Each Time You Fall You Gain Experience characters on a wall scroll or portrait...
吃一塹長一智 is a Chinese proverb that means “Fall into a moat, and you will gain wisdom from the experience.”
It really suggests that the failures, troubles, frustrations, and setbacks that you encounter in your life are actually helping you to find wisdom. Some would also translate this proverb as “Learn from your mistakes” or “Learn from your experience.”
If you are studying Chinese, you will recognize the first character as “eat,” but in this case, it means to “experience” (as used in this proverb, it is suggesting that you have fallen into a moat and/or had a hard time crossing it).
Translated character by character, this whole proverb is, “Experience one moat, gain one wisdom/knowledge.”
Note: This can be pronounced in Korean, but it's not a commonly used phrase.
The following table may be helpful for those studying Chinese or Japanese...
Title | Characters | Romaji (Romanized Japanese) | Various forms of Romanized Chinese | |
Each Time You Stumble and Fall, You Gain Experience and Wisdom | 吃一塹長一智 吃一堑长一智 | chī yí qiàn, zhǎng yí zhì chi1 yi2 qian4 zhang3 yi2 zhi4 chi yi qian zhang yi zhi chiyiqianzhangyizhi | ch`ih i ch`ien chang i chih chihichienchangichih chih i chien chang i chih |
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In some entries above you will see that characters have different versions above and below a line. In these cases, the characters above the line are Traditional Chinese, while the ones below are Simplified Chinese. |
All of our calligraphy wall scrolls are handmade.
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.
Allow a few weeks for delivery. Rush service speeds it up by a week or two for $10!
When you select your calligraphy, you'll be taken to another page where you can choose various custom options.
The wall scroll that Sandy is holding in this picture is a "large size"
single-character wall scroll.
We also offer custom wall scrolls in small, medium, and an even-larger jumbo size.
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.