Diligence

Another piece taken from my late father's calligraphy collection and get this, this particular calligraphy guidebook was published in HongKong in 1974 and sold for HK$1.60 (and if my memory serves me right, it was M$0.80 after conversion). Things have changed a lot since that year when I was just out of high school and had just begun my life-long vocation of teaching as a wide-eyed trainee at a rural Chinese school accessible via an earth road, sometimes riding piggyback on my colleague's scooter. Those were the days when life was simple, with me molding the malleable minds of young students who were thrust into society at a tender age to help their parents in eking out a livelihood in the austere rubber estate setting.

The cover of the guidebook, truncated at the top portion for space from the splendidly elegant original look, appears to the right.