Quzhou has long been known as “the thoroughfare of four provinces and the meeting head of five roads.” Its shops stand dense and its merchants gather like clouds, making it an excellent place to hunt for curious objects. On Upper Street in Kecheng there was once an unremarkable little shop called Guancang Brush House, which sold nothing but writing brushes of every kind. One summer year I bought there a mixed-hair brush with a tip made of seven parts purple rabbit and three parts goat, and a handle of purple sandalwood. Such a brush was not unusual in Quzhou. They were sold everywhere, and the workmanship on this one was quite ordinary. There was not even any carved inscription, wire inlay, or lacquer painting on the shaft. Yet the brush wrote very smoothly, so I used it for my correspondence ever after. When winter came that year, the brush unexpectedly began to shed hair. I assumed I had bought a fake and left it neglected on the brush rack. But one day in the twelfth month I happened to glance at it and found that the tip had turned gray-white in color, full and rounded. I tried writing a few characters with it, and to my surprise the hairs came to a perfectly even point and the brush strength was firm and vigorous. Greatly puzzled, I began using it again. After spring arrived, it started shedding once more, its hairs turning blue-black, and when I wrote with it the strokes came out full and the ink flowed evenly. Only then did I realize that I had in fact bought a fine brush.
The Ming writer Wen Zhenheng said, “Pointed, even, rounded, resilient: these are the four virtues of the brush.” This brush of mine was pointed in spring, even in summer, rounded in autumn, and resilient in winter. Its hairs changed color with the seasons like a living creature. In old times such brushes were called seasonal brushes. The Record of Craftsmanship gives a detailed account of the entire process of brushmaking, from selecting materials, removing grease, blending ingredients, combing and washing, pressing, rolling the tip, evening the hairs, binding the head, mounting the head, dry trimming, gluing the point, carving characters, and attaching the cord. Yet when it comes to seasonal brushes it says only a few vague words. I suspect this is because the hairs attached to them are still growing on their original host. After I had used the brush for several years, it suddenly went bald. Presumably the host had died.
My friend Guan Shu also once bought a brush from this same shop. I heard that north of the river it could write beautiful regular small script, but south of the river it was better suited for composing small-seal script, which is very strange indeed. Such marvelous things can hide even within a brush no bigger than this, and even the old books do not describe them in full. Who knows how many fine brushes that little Guancang Brush House once kept hidden away. Last year when I passed through Quzhou, I made a special trip to look for it, only to find that Upper Street in Kecheng had already been demolished and rebuilt as a new housing development. The little shop had long since vanished without a trace.