Lacking the hustle and bustle of other Shanghai streets, the peaceful Hailun Road in Hongkou District is relatively unknown.

Our coach meandered through lane after lane before arriving at the road's entrance.

It did not take much effort to find our destination on the road - No 504 - where once lived a master calligrapher, poet and scholar for whom we had come all this way to pay our respects.

A wooden plaque at the gate with five big Chinese characters written by veteran calligrapher Sha Menghai told us where we were: the former residence of Shen Yinmo (1883-1971).

The ordinary three-storey, five-room house with a parasol tree in front was renovated and opened in 1990 by the local government as a private museum to commemorate the property's former owner.

On a pleasant morning earlier this month, the old house received our group of scholars, artists and journalists from China, the United States and Singapore for a grand event to mark the 30th anniversary of Shen's death and the 118th anniversary of his birth.

Besides an organized tour of Shen's former residence, other celebrations in Shanghai included an exhibition of his calligraphy, a seminar on his life and art and the release of some new books on his calligraphy and early poems.

"In this house, Mr Shen Yinmo lived from 1946 until his death in 1971," Chu Jiaji, the current director of the museum and the niece of Shen's late wife Chu Baoquan, told us.

Now, the home's hall and dining room on the first floor have been turned into exhibition halls to introduce Shen's life and art. The couple's bedroom and study on the second floor, however, are arranged elegantly the way they were when they lived in.

It was in this Shanghai house that Shen started to devote himself to the art of calligraphy and made his name as a great calligrapher and scholar in Chinese art history.

Born in 1883 to an official's family in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Shen was trained in traditional Chinese calligraphy and literature from childhood.

After studying briefly in Japan, he returned to his parent's hometown in East China's Zhejiang Province in 1907 to become a teacher. It was there that Shen met his future comrades in the New Culture Movement, including Chen Duxiu, who later became a founder of the Communist Party of China.

One interesting fact is that it was Chen who stimulated Shen's desire to improve his calligraphy.

When they first met, as Shen recalled in an article, the straightforward Chen criticized him saying "your calligraphy was far worse than your poetry, which is good."

"Being embarrassed though, I realized what he said was true and since then I have been determined to work harder on calligraphy," Shen said.

From 1913, Shen worked for 16 years as a literature professor at Peking University in Beijing.

Then he joined other colleagues and friends such as Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu and Lu Xun to launch the influential New Culture Movement in modern Chinese history. He was one of six editors of the popular New Youth magazine, a leading theoretical base for the cultural movement and for introducing Maxism to China.

In 1918, the magazine published nine poems by Shen Yinmo, Hu Shi and Liu Bannong, which were the earliest "Baihua" (free verse) Chinese poems. Shen's poem "Moon Night" was expecially praised by critics as the first mature piece of free verse Chinese poetry.

However, Shen did not forgot calligraphy. He worked with professors Liu San and Ma Heng as instructors for a students' calligraphy society on campus, according to Hua Rende, a scholar of Chinese calligraphy history from the Suzhou University.

In 1929, he became director of the Education Bureau of Hebei Province and in 1932 became the president of the Beiping (Peking) University. But he soon quit this position because he was not satisfied with the university's prevention of student movements.

The period around 1929 was an important turning point in Shen's calligraphy road, Taiwan scholar Chen Yulin wrote in her book "The Calligraphic Art of Shen Yinmo."

At that time, the collections of the Palace Museum began to open to the public, among them precious hand-written calligraphy by masters of previous dynasties. Shen had the opportunity to view many of these and followed their example.

As a result, he developed a great interest in the running and cursive styles of Chinese calligraphy and mastered them, especially those by ancient master calligraphers Wang Xizhi, Wang Xianzhi, Wang Xun, Chu Suiliang and Mi Fu. With these influences, his personal style of calligraphy began to mature, becoming graceful, fluid and spontaneous.

From 1932 to 1939, Shen worked as director of the Sino-French Cultural Exchange and Publishing Commission based in Shanghai until the organization disbanded due to the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-45).

During this period he spent a lot of time studying the calligraphy of Tang Dynasty calligrapher Chu Suiliang as well as later calligraphers, according to Chen Yulin.

From 1939 until 1946, Shen Yinmo worked for the Kuomintang government in Chongqing, the war-time capital of China.

"In the then national cultural centre of Chongqing, Shen was able to communicate with many other leading artists and scholars, such as Yu Youren, Zhang Shizhao and Wang Dong, and find his understanding of calligraphy progressing," said Qianshen Bai, a calligraphy scholar from Boston University in the United States.

Disappointed with the Kuomintang authorities, Shen concentrated more on the study of calligraphy. In 1946, when the war ended, he left his post and returned to Shanghai to live as an independent calligrapher.

During his Chongqing period, Shen published his first essay on the theory of Chinese calligraphy, which proved to be the prelude to his later career in the field of calligraphy studies.

For three years before the New China was founded in 1949, Shen led a hermit's life in Shanghai, making a living through selling his own calligraphy.

Soon after Shanghai's liberation in 1949, Chen Yi, the new mayor who later became China's vice-premier, paid a surprise visit to the calligrapher and scholar. "You are the first senior intellectual I have visited in Shanghai," the mayor said to Shen.

Highly respected by the new government, Shen was invited to some social and advisory positions in Shanghai and at the national level.

In 1959, Shen made a suggestion to the central government, urging it to emphasize the traditional art of Chinese calligraphy and set up organizations to promote it.

In 1960, with the approval of Chairman Mao Zedong, the Shanghai Society of Chinese Calligraphy and Seal-carving, the first such organization in the nation, was established with Shen as the first director.

The organization laid the foundation for promoting calligraphy education and research in New China. Following the Shanghai example, the Chinese Calligraphers Association, a national organization, was established in 1981.

In 1960, in recognition of Shen's prominence, Premier Zhou Enlai appointed him deputy director of the Central Academy of Culture and History, a rare honour given to the nation's best artists and scholars.

In spite of his worsening health, especially a serious eye disease, the aged Shen showed great enthusiasm in teaching young calligraphy learners.

His small house on the Hailun Road became a public classroom and he often gave lectures at cultural venues in the city. He also published numerous books on calligraphy theory and practice.

His work has influenced generations of younger calligraphers, forming an important school of contemporary Chinese calligraphy known as "Shen's Style." Among his best students are such influential calligraphers as Xie Zhiliu, Hu Wensui and Weng Kaiyun.

During the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), when art and culture was neglected and destroyed, the master calligrapher could not escape the disaster.

Tortured by the "red guards," Shen tore a lot of his precious calligraphy works into pieces and put them in a basin filled with water, according to Shanghai researcher Zhang Xiaohong.

On June 1, 1971, the 88-year-old master passed away in Shanghai. Strolling in the quiet, empty former residence, I couldn't help recollecting the master's famous description of Chinese calligraphy: "Without sound, it has the rhythm of music; without colour, it acquires the beauty of painting."

This description serves as a vivid sketch of the calligrapher's art and personality, too.

Life is short, art is long.

(China Daily 06/15/2001)