Bold black Chinese character

The shop in Gerrard Street has finally let me hold the brush for the big sign, the one for the bakery window, and Mr Lau stood behind me the whole morning with his arms folded like a gatepost. I did the first seven strokes without a tremor. Then I came to the rabbit, the character in the front of your old lesson book, the one with the ears that stand up like two hooks on a coat rack, and my hand went cold.

He said nothing for a long while. Then he took a sheet of newsprint, dipped the hair brush so the ink ran black and slow, and wrote the character himself in one movement without lifting the brush once. The left side bent up like a startled ear, the right side folded down over a small square, and the tail came off the bottom like a flick of wet hair. "The rabbit does not stop to think," he said. "If you think, it runs."

I have been trying to do it that way since. Yesterday I sat on the harbour wall at Brighton with the ink pot balanced on my knee and drew the character in the sand with a stick, over and over, until the tide came up and smoothed it flat. An old fisherman watched from his deckchair and asked whether I was writing a name. I told him it was a rabbit. He laughed and said there were none on the pier, only gulls, and they never stayed still long enough to be drawn.

I am going to try again tomorrow, before the light changes. Tell Mother the ink is good and I am eating properly.

Your sister, Lin