Writing ει’¨η΄°ι¨ (he2feng1xi4yu3; gentle breeze and light rain) with a cat's tail on a water-writing mat.
Water-writing mats turn black when wet and return to their original colour once dry, so they are often used to practise calligraphy with water. The black colour allows you to see your writing clearly, and the mat can be reused as soon as the writing dries and disappears.
[eng by me]
Didβ¦did some people think the video was suggesting replacing calligraphy brushes with a live catβs tail?
The tone of the clarification that itβs water-writing mat suggests someone thought he dipped her in the ink the pen nib
I don't know where (on a scale from super common to super rare) such mats fall for the Chinese-speaking internet, but I expect the English-speaking internet mostly hasn't heard of such thingsβI certainly hadn'tβand I very much appreciate that clarification, because water in a black bowl that makes black marks on a nearby surface looks enough like black ink that I was briefly confused about why the kitty tail tip wasn't also black
and like, I have stuck my cat's paw on an inkpad so I could stamp something with her pawprintβonly once bc she really hated washing the ink off after, but it was nontoxic ink, I checkedβso the idea of using a cat tail dipped in ink as a calligraphy brush doesn't sound immediately absurd to me, assuming the cat is cooperative
@cameoamalthea
A lot of people didn't notice the colour of the cat's tail! Water-writing mats are pretty common (I also have one), but they are usually white/grey and gridded to help with practice, and they generally don't show up in this kind of context. So in combination with the water bowl being black, it's not surprising that many people thought it was normal ink and paper.
