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It was an incredible experience - Paul Cavanagh from Australia created his own piece of calligraphy just a couple of minutes after watching the demonstration by Chen Xiang, a Chinese calligraphy teacher.

Cavanagh had never tried Chinese calligraphy before and his first inglorious attempt was something that looked like it came from a kindergarten.

“I had seen calligraphy in exhibitions and I always wondered how they could get those wide strokes with such a small brush,” Cavanagh says. “When I was asked to have a look at Chen’s calligraphy I thought I would give it a try.”

Traditionally good calligraphy comes from long and arduous training and practice. Many calligraphers begin working on their art when they are very young and carry on practising it throughout their entire lives.

But for Chen Xiang, this art form should be accessible to anyone, even those who cannot read or write Chinese.

“I know it might sound unbelievable,” says the 36-year-old. “But the truth is that everyone can learn Chinese calligraphy in 30 hours. The result will be the same as someone who has undertaken five years of painstaking practice in the traditional Chinese calligraphy teaching system.”

After 15 years of study and exercise, Chen invented an innovative Chinese calligraphy teaching method called “The Four Strengths Method.” This lets the strength of the eyes, fingers, wrists and arms flow correctly to create the art.

“Traditional calligraphy teaching seems like a process of ’simplicity to complexity’,” he says. “Too many people give up because it takes many years of dedicated practice. What I am trying to do is to keep the art simple and straight forward.”

A native of Qingyuan, Zhejiang Province, Chen has been honored by UNESCO as a Chinese folk art master. He has been a calligraphy mentor for Chinese educational television. His works attract increasing attention from collectors at home and abroad.

To promote and popularize Chinese calligraphy, Chen recently opened a demonstration center in collaboration with Talking China. The center offers calligraphy courses and workshops.

“The unique Chinese calligraphic art should not be a fading tradition,” Chen says. “Chinese people have a responsibility to help it survive in the computer age.”

Chen’s affinity with Chinese calligraphy began when he was in military service in the 1990s. At first he followed the traditional teaching system, but later he decided to teach himself the art.

“I find that good calligraphy begins with the ability to observe, and then to control and manipulate the brush,” Chen says. “Before writing, it is necessary to spend some time staring at the characters from a copybook of calligraphy.”

Chinese characters are different from foreign alphabets in their strokes, structure and shape. Various changes in intensity, density, thickness of point and line represent different emotions.

Chen says good calligraphy always emphasizes the harmony of structure, the proper balance and rhythm of characters.

“The most beautiful Chinese characters are usually written in the shape of triangles and diamonds,” he says.

Cavanagh and Chen’s other students are taught to position the character’s shape with four dots at first, representing the top, bottom, left and right sides. They are taught to create a pleasing balance with the characters on the paper, using thick and thin lines, and heavy and light shading. His method also stresses concentration when practising calligraphy.

“It means that the mind of the calligrapher should not be disturbed by the outside,” Chen explains. “His thoughts should remain pure, indifferent to fame or gain. But this is not easy to achieve in a bustling city.”

Rich culture

Cavanagh says that “The Four Strengths Method” is really logical for him. This special experience has also encouraged him to explore in more depth the rich culture that China has to offer.

“I consider it not a ’short-cut’ teaching method but a logical method of learning the basics of the fine art of Chinese calligraphy in a short amount of time,” he adds. “Once the basics are learned then it requires a lot of practice to master it - as always ‘practice makes perfect.’”

Over the past years, Chen’s calligraphy teaching has been enriched through his experience as a volunteer teacher in rural areas. He taught many poor students Chinese calligraphy, which helped them build up their confidence and personality.

As well as expats who are very interested in Chinese culture, his courses have also attracted many local white-collar workers.

“Because of my tight working schedule, it was a luxury for me to learn how to create beautiful calligraphy,” says Chen Yan, a 20-something public relations employee. “Using Chen’s method, I can achieve satisfying results in a few hours, which is very encouraging for my future study.”

From September, Chinese calligraphy will be officially added to the local primary and middle school curriculum, which is reflecting increasing public concerns about the preservation of this age-old art form.

Chen finds this a perfect time to promote his method. However, some calligraphers who stick with traditional calligraphy teaching systems have doubts.

Some people even associate it with Li Yang’s “Crazy English” teaching method, which encourages students to shout phrases out loudly, quickly, repeatedly, even with hand gestures, stressing pronunciation.

The famous calligrapher and painter Liu Qi says there is no short-cut to the art. Liu’s students are taught to practise at least eight hours a day and spend a lot of time reading Chinese classics on philosophy, literature and sociology to improve their aesthetic taste and general understanding.

In his opinion, calligraphy reveals one’s personality. Although the long hours of practice are challenging for everybody, the art will eventually provide the students with peace and tranquility in their hearts.

Traditional essence

“Like Chinese opera and martial arts, Chinese calligraphy is one of the ‘traditional essences’,” Liu says. “The art has such a profound meaning and artistic conception. Chen’s method can only grasp some of the basic skills of calligraphy and achieve ‘a shape likeness,’ but cannot reach its spirit and rich connotations.”

He explains that the highly skilled Chinese calligraphy expresses the artist’s ideas through the way the ink is applied to the paper. The practice is described as “the ink holds five colors” and can only be achieved by a student after more than 10 years’ constant practice.

Liu’s words are echoed by Qiu Zhonglin, a local white-collar worker who is enthusiastic about Chinese culture and history.

“You could never rely on a ‘fast-food’ way of teaching to reach and inherit the true essence of Chinese calligraphy,” says Qiu. “In fact, this abstract and sublime form of art requires an imagination and freedom of creation and not just some written tips.”

Chen is calm in the face of controversy about his method, saying that it needs a long time to have new things accepted by the public. “My teaching center is not motivated by profit, but a strong desire to spread Chinese culture globally,” he adds. “And Chinese people also have a responsibility to improve their calligraphy.”

So far Chen has helped more than 70 Chinese children from poverty-stricken areas. He says that some of the revenue from his teaching center will go to charity.

“Infomercial King” Billy Mays has died at his Florida home on Sunday aged 50. His death comes shortly after he was involved in an incident on Saturday when the plane he was traveling came in for a rough landing at Tampa International Airport.

It is not clear how Mays died, but his wife Deborah has said her husband spoke of feeling unwell on Saturday evening before retiring to bed.

Tampa police have said linking the death to the hard landing of flight 1241 would be “pure speculation” and although no inquiry was yet underway US Airways spokesman Jim Olson has said that the company would cooperate fully with any investigation launched by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Born on July 20, 1958 in Pennsylvania, William Darrell Mays became well known for his loud and flamboyant sales pitches. Amongst the products he promoted were OxiClean and Orange Glo. As well appearing on the Home Shopping Network, Mays was recruited in 2009 by the Discovery Channel for the docudrama Pitchmen.

A voracious reader, Lucas Glover took a moment to scan the names etched on the walls of the U.S. Open trophy.
From Hagen to Sarazen, Jones to Hogan, Palmer to Trevino and Nicklaus to Woods, Glover couldn’t put the glistening silver chalice down. The last name on the list, improbably, is his, a permanent tribute to his win at the 109th U.S. Open on Monday, after a grueling week at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, New York.

“I hope I don’t downgrade it or anything with my name on there,” Glover, 29, quipped. “It’s an honor, and I’m just excited and happy as I can be to be here.”

Glover’s perfectly timed birdie at the par-four 16th sealed his two-stroke victory over Phil Mickelson, David Duval and Ricky Barnes. Glover finished at four-under 276 for the long, damp, oft-delayed week, getting just the second win of his career.

He was on the right side of the draw, weather-wise, for the first two rounds, opening with a 69 and then shooting a second-round 64 in rare scoring conditions for a U.S. Open. Glover didn’t break par the rest of the way, shooting 70 in the third round and then closing with a 73 on Monday.

So many storylines unfolded during the final round of the Open. There was Duval, who started the day ranked No. 882 in the world, looking for his first win in eight years. There was Barnes, who’ll go down in history as the fourth player to reach double-digits below par in the U.S. Open, wasting a huge lead with a bogey barrage that doomed his chances.

And then there was Mickelson, looking for something that would have been pure Hollywood.

Amy, his wife, will begin breast cancer treatment next month. Mickelson won’t play any golf for a while, so his wife sent him to this tournament asking for a truly one-of-a-kind vase for her upcoming hospital stay: A big trophy with curved handles and a little statuette on top.

He almost pulled it off, too. He tied Glover for the lead after an eagle at the par-five 13th, but two bogeys coming in left Mickelson tied for second at the U.S. Open for a record fifth time.

“Maybe it’s more in perspective for me, because I feel different this time,” Mickelson said. “I don’t know where to go with this, because I want to win this tournament badly.”

Tiger Woods was 15 shots back in the third round. For the first time in five years, he isn’t the reigning champion at any of the majors.

He was four shots back with four holes to play after a birdie at No. 14, but the “Can he do this?” chatter ended quickly. Woods hit a five-iron over the 15th green to make bogey, and had to settle for a 69 that left him in a tie for sixth, four shots off Glover, who’s only win, until now, came when he holed out a bunker shot on the final hole at Disney nearly five years ago.

Researchers at the University of Illinois report that a toxic molecule known to damage cells and cause disease may also play a pivotal role in bird migration. The molecule, superoxide, is proposed as a key player in the mysterious process that allows birds to “see” Earth’s magnetic field.

The discovery, reported this month in Biophysical Journal, occurred as a result of a “mistake” made by a collaborator, said principal investigator Klaus Schulten, a professor of physics at University of Illinois. His postdoctoral collaborator, Ilia Solov’yov, of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, did not know that superoxide was toxic, seeing it instead as an ideal reaction partner in a biochemical process involving the protein cryptochrome in a bird’s eye.

Cryptochrome is a blue-light photoreceptor found in plants and in the eyes of birds and other animals. Schulten was the first to propose (in 2000) that this protein was a key component of birds’ geomagnetic sense, a proposal that was later corroborated by experimental evidence. He made this prediction after he and his colleagues discovered that magnetic fields can influence chemical reactions if the reactions occur quickly enough to be governed by pure quantum mechanics.

“Prior to our work, it was thought that this was impossible because magnetic fields interact so weakly with molecules,” he said.

Such chemical reactions involve electron transfers, Schulten said, “which result in freely tumbling spins of electrons. These spins behave like an axial compass.”

Changes in the electromagnetic field, such as those experienced by a bird changing direction in flight, appear to alter this biochemical compass in the eye, allowing the bird to see how its direction corresponds to north or south.

“Other researchers had found that cryptochrome, acting through its own molecular spins, recruits a reaction partner that operatesat so-called zero spin. They suggested that molecular oxygen is that partner,” Schulten said. “We propose that the reaction partner is not the benign oxygen molecule that we all breathe, but its close cousin, superoxide, a negatively charged oxygen molecule.”

When Solov’yov showed that superoxide would work well as a reaction partner, Schulten was at first dismissive.

“But then I realized that the toxicity of superoxide was actually crucial to its role,” he said. The body has many mechanisms for reducing concentrations of superoxide to prevent its damaging effects, Schulten said. But this gives an advantage, since the molecule must be present at low concentrations — but not too low — “to make the biochemical compass work effectively,” he said.

Although known primarily as an agent of aging and cellular damage, superoxide recently has been recognized for its role in cellular signaling.

However, its toxicity may also explain why humans, who also have cryptochrome in their eyes, do not have the same ability to see Earth’s electromagnetic field, Schulten said.

“Our bodies try to play it safe,” he said. “It might be that human evolution chose longevity over orientational ability.”

Chinese experts told a seminar Thursday that it’s necessary for men to have the legal right to paid paternity leave, since more Chinese men recognize their responsibilities and demands for nursing.

“Currently, gender equality in the country’s laws is mainly focused on public affairs. No laws have specified men’s rights for paternity leave,” said Liu Cheng, researcher from the Women’s Studies Center under the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Liu spoke during a seminar on paternity leave. Liu suggested such rights be written into the Social Insurance Law, which is still under formulation.

In a 2007 survey by the center, 92 percent of the 840 respondents said men had a right to time off for the arrival of a baby. Only 2.5 percent said labor was purely a “women’s matter”.

The survey included government officials, staff at foreign-invested companies, workers from private companies and many other occupations from cities including Beijing, Xi’an and Nanjing. Among the respondents, 59 percent were male.

“It indicates that people have developed a positive attitude toward men’s involvement” in the arrival of children, said Li Huiying, director of the Women’s Studies Center.

“Women’s capacity to bear children is not a drawback to their work. Rather, it’s rather a kind of reproduction of the work force, and thus a contribution to society,” said Li.

So far, 36 countries, mostly in Europe, have leave for both parents. In China, 26 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions offer time off for men. The duration of such holidays ranges from three days to a month.

“Such holidays only exist in regional law, and only as an addition to the country’s birth control policy,” said Liu Cheng. “It’s not independent, and it doesn’t really reflect gender equality in family responsibilities.

“If such rights were written into the Social Insurance Law, it’d be the first law in the country to encourage men’s involvement in such private matters, ” she added.

Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) launched a service on Sunday in Singapore that lets mobile subscribers download music files and videos.

SingTel, Southeast Asia’s leading telecommunications company, developed the service with Universal Music. It hopes the web-based facility, called AMPed, will help it attract new customers as well as get existing subscribers to upgrade service plans.

“SingTel decided two years ago that the telco of the future needs to be more than just bits and bytes,” SingTel’s CEO for Singapore Allen Lew said.

More than 50 percent of Singapore mobile users listened to music on their phones and SingTel needed to provide customers with information and entertainment as well, he said.

SingTel, which owns Australia’s number two telco Optus and stakes in mobile phone companies in India, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh, has been diversifying into content to reduce its reliance on “pure carriage.”

It now provides a web-based pay TV service in Singapore as well as lifestyle Internet portals.

SingTel and Universal Music’s AMPed works with 3G (or third generation) handsets from Nokia, Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson.