Stroke order
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A notoriously complex Sinograph:
We've encountered this character before:
"Writing Chinese characters as a form of punishment" (11/1/15)
"The Awful Chinese Writing System" (1/20/16)
It is pronounced biang, signifies a kind of noodles that is popular in Shaanxi province (
麵), and has between 56 and 62 strokes, depending on who is counting.
As I watched the calligrapher proceed, two things gave me pause. First of all, I thought that his stroke order was wrong. I especially was taken aback how, after he wrote the "roof" (穴), he then proceeded to put "speech" (言) on top of "horse" (馬). Naturally, a lot of other things came in the wrong sequence. More about that below.
The second thing that bothered me is how the calligrapher stops / pauses in the middle of some strokes. I always thought that strokes should be made in one continuous movement. (Of course, his writing is vastly superior to my own!) As one of my correspondents, who is a specialist on Chinese calligraphy put it, "his strokes lack abstract rhythm and vigor — each of his lines keeps its consistency and there is not much change of thickness, etc."
This character is a "special case", so there is no fixed order. Then again, that is true of many characters, with different folks having different strokes, as we discovered before:
"Stroke order inputting" (10/30/11)
"Stroke order of Chinese characters" (9/4/18)
"Character crises" (6/15/18)
"The ultimate Chinese character input method" (12/27/15)
(and many other posts)
Now back to the business of stroke order. Here's the way this monstrosity of a character is written in the video:
I've already indicated some of my disagreement with this order of the components in my remarks above.
Fortunately, folk ditties telling the proper order of the components have circulated, and they have been gathered in this article by Liáng Chéngqīng 梁澄清. While there are some variations in the complete sequence, they more or less follow this one:
穴 → 言 → 幺（L） → 幺（R） → 長（L） → 長（R） → 馬 → 心 → 月 → 刂 → 辶
I'm happy to report that, following my natural instincts in accord with the principles of character construction to which I have adhered from the very beginning of my training in the writing of hanzi, the way I write this character is essentially the same as that advocated by the folk ditty. Since the ditty was written to express the "meaning" of the composition of the character (how the parts fit together with some sort of logic or connectedness), it shows how the Japanese calligrapher's stroke / component order doesn't make as much sense as the one that results from following the traditional principles I learned from my teachers.
[H.t. John Rohsenow; thanks to Leqi Yu and Xiuyuan Mi]
dainichi said,
October 30, 2018 @ 8:19 pm
> The second thing that bothered me is how the calligrapher stops / pauses in the middle of some strokes. I always thought that strokes should be made in one continuous movement.
What's an example? His "flow" seems fairly common for what is usually taught in Japan. (Not that I am an expert in any way whatsoever)
Chris C. said,
October 31, 2018 @ 12:27 am
Isn't it usual for some characters to be written with a different stroke order in Japan than China? I would assume the calligrapher adheres to the usual practice for Japan here, although I doubt anyone in Japan uses this character at all given that I don't think they have these noodles there.
Even the animation for writing the character on its Wikipedia article screws it up, according to the caption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biangbiang_noodles
David Marjanović said,
October 31, 2018 @ 8:11 am
I don't know if it extends to such issues, but it does extend to the very basics: 十 (alone or as a real or imagined element in other characters) gets its horizontal stroke first in China, but its vertical one in Japan.
Antonio L. Banderas said,
October 31, 2018 @ 9:46 am
@David Marjanović
>十 (alone or as a real or imagined element in other characters)
Could you please elaborate a bit your statement?
Miriam said,
October 31, 2018 @ 1:23 pm
>Could you please elaborate a bit your statement?
For example, the centre of 田.
dainichi said,
October 31, 2018 @ 7:19 pm
> 十 (alone […] gets its […] vertical [stroke first] in Japan.
Wh… that's news to me, and a quick search for support contradicts it:
https://kaku-navi.com/kanji/kanji01346.html
liuyao said,
October 31, 2018 @ 11:46 pm
A bit off topic: I had a theory that some of the stroke orders were modified when the Chinese started writing horizontally, so that you could move on to the next character more naturally. Is there any truth to that?