August 1, 2015, Dartmouth students visited the Forest of Stelae in Xi’an, Northwest China. Prof. Xing highlighted a Tang Dynasty Emperor’s calligraphy of the Filial Piety and had the following picture taken in front of the masterpiece.

Some Dartmouth students looked into the details of the stone classic in clerical script.

Now the students understood why the characters in the calligraphy masterpieces included in our calligraphy textbook were white with black background.