Couplet in the Style of the Haotaiwang Stele

At the request of Li Ming (Richard Lai), Feng Kanghou used the characters from the Haotaiwang Stele, a monument commemorating an ancient Korean king dated 414, to compose and transcribe this poetic couplet:

The mountain villages in my homeland spread near and far;
Year after year fragrant hemp is harvested in abundance.

(trans. by Shi-yee Liu)

Feng followed his model closely. The clerical script characters, in distinct rectangular shapes, are evenly spaced out. The strictly parallel strokes and perpendicular intersections create a sense of stability appropriate for writings expected to last forever. As befits a work from a transitional period, the stele's calligraphy also incorporates attributes of seal script and standard script. Most noticeably, the emphatic flaring at the end of horizontal or diagonal strokes, which is typical of clerical script writings, is missing. Instead, the width of individual strokes is rather even throughout, the corners are often rounded, and straight lines sometimes turn into smooth curves—all stylistic characteristics of seal script—while the occasional modulation of individual strokes is a defining feature of standard script.