It All Began With The First Stroke - How I Started, Kan

I love new year periods, like now [I started writing this since couple of months back, the 2015 new year period, but was seriously way too hectic to complete this...]. This is the time when clients who have followed the Lotus for 8 years, 10 years, come back to the Lotus and prosper themselves for the coming year. It's comforting to recount their progress over the years. They are a testament to the promise of the Lotus. 

In these times, I would recount the years that I myself started. How did I arrive here today, to advice, to consult, to be a representative, and in fact - a part of the Lotus? It has been 18 years.

Today, I am speaking to you directly through our talkshows and short clips. With me here, Herng Wei, my client and friend.

Many would have heard me saying that I started like how the primly attired tea stewards of the Lotus galleries are doing now - learning how to brew tea, in the Lotus way. 

Then I recalled, preparing tea was actually the second lesson. The first lesson was Chinese calligraphy. 

When I was 8 or 9 years old, Master Yun started teaching me to write simple stokes with the Chinese calligraphy brush. In those times when the Western way and culture were dominant, it was perceived as "uncool" to be associated with such "Cheena" activities. But this discrimination has never impeded Master Yun from teaching the ways of our ancestors. Throughout all these years, I finally come to know Master Yun as a person who doesn't really care what others think, even less of what others unreasonably feel, but zealously focused on doing what he knows is right. And his reason is simple, as like how truths often are: this is our culture, if we don't do it, who will?

Every stroke, with strength. Eventually, they laid the foundations of the Lotus. And of course, the Double Dragon jadeite ring

And if you have touched calligraphy before, you would know that the very beginning is day after day of mundane writing of strokes, vertical, horizontal strokes. After the first "boring" lesson, a few dropped out. A few more sessions later, more disappeared from Master Yun's calligraphy class. Master Yun never wavered. He never short-cut the rigorous training required. He also never pandered to the suggestions that wanted him to adjust according to the wishes of the masses. He explained simply: well, not every one can breathe and live my standards. It's not the culture that needs to change. It is not the students' fault either.

What was born out of those black strokes on white rice paper were to last me a lifetime. The belief that you can control the soft brush, through the disciplined persistence to do it day after day, and the commitment to endure our culture.

This was way before I started touching jadeite, way before I started learning about the stars. Way before the first Lotus gallery was founded, I was grinding ink on inkstones while learning to decipher their quality, and stroke by stroke, laying today's foundations. This was when I was in primary school.

And when I was ready, Master Yun went on to guide me in literature, philosophy, taiji, jadeite, fengshui, crystals, agarwood...

...that took 18 years. And I think I am far from done. 

-- Kan Ying Loong, Executive Director