The National Museum of Prehistory has unveiled 20-meter long “spring couplets” to welcome in the Lunar New Year. This festive kind of decoration is common in Taiwan, but the island has yet to see one quite this big!
Why is there a man standing on a crane outside the National Museum of Prehistory’s Tainan branch? It’s ok! He’s supposed to be there. This is master calligrapher Chen Shih-hsien.
Wielding a super-sized writing brush, Chen is writing spring couplets on a massive red cloth draped outside the seven-story museum building. Spring couplets are lucky phrases written with brush and ink on red paper or cloth. They are everywhere in Taiwan this time of year, as people hang them up to celebrate the Lunar New Year. But this 20-meter-long work is Taiwan’s longest.
Chen has everything he needs, including a large bucket of black ink. But it’s no easy task, because it’s much harder to write calligraphy while standing than while sitting. Not to mention that that a crane high above the ground is not the kind of place where calligraphers usually practice their art!
It took Chen 30 minutes to finish his work.