The plaque of “Loyalty, Filial Piety, Honesty and Integrity”

The plaque of “Loyalty, Filial Piety, Honesty and Integrity”

The plaque is hung on the left and right gables of Yuyan Hall, with inscription on the bottom reading “Zhu Xi”. The gold regular script in a black background looks gigantic, graceful and vigorous, yet the structure and strokes are well-retained. Since most of the existing Zhu Xi’s calligraphic works are oftentimes seen as small and delicate characters on letters. Such enormous handwriting must have been enlarged from those on his manuscripts. These scripts, enlarged from small without losing the spirit, fully demonstrate the practiced calligrapher’s exceptional skills. A well-known Neo-Confucian, thinker, philosopher, educator and poet, Zhu Xi is a representative personage of Fujian School and dubbed Zhu Zi as a master Confucian. He and Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi are called “Cheng-Zhu School”. Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism has infusive influences upon the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties and was adopted as the official philosophy throughout the three dynasties, making Zhu Xi a figure second to Confucius in the history of education in China.