The above is a scroll I've had for a while.  I spent the past couple of weeks trying to translate it.  I figured out about 70% of the characters, but couldn't work out the rest, so I had my friend from Beijing complete it.

Following are the characters and pinyin, if anyone is interested in translating the "story."  Even with all the characters, I had no clue what it meant.  My friend translated it and it's pretty interesting, but I'll leave it up for a few days in case anyone wants to give it a go...then I'll post the meaning of the scroll.

Enjoy,
Brent

P.S.  If you're not familiar with Chinese calligraphy scrolls, they're read from top down, starting from the right "column" and moving to the left...it's also written in 傳統漢字 (traditional characters).


Translation:

P.P.S.  A fun video of a man in Beijing doing "water calligraphy" on the street. Pretty amazing.

Following is the scroll translation, from my 北京朋友。  The way she translates the story is really great, I love it.  And it works well with the meaning.

If you are been with wise man, it's like walking in the very humidity environment of fog weather, even you have dry cloths on, you get moisturizing.

If you are been with not wise man, it's like sitting in the bathroom which is polluted environment, even you have clean cloths on you are breathing in the bad air!

Meaning behind the words:  Be with good people that you can benefit with, stay away from bad people who can damage you.

calkins,

that's great! Very wise saying and I've always loved the poetic way these Chinese saying are put.Was this your own scroll ? I love Chinese calligraphy.Yeah,I always thought Chinese used to read the characters from top down etc.When did they switch to setting out their characters from left to right I wonder?

I see shu1fa3 means calligraphy.I'm not sure what the Translation (roll over) refers to but rolling my mouse over the text didn't give me the translation.Was it the link that it was referring to? Just checking things are working here and a trivial point of mine anyhow.Fantastic job though on these posts calkins.Cheers.

I agree, I love the way Chinese poetry is.  I often enjoy the bluntness...like this one saying that you are basically sitting in a stinky bathroom!  Ha ha.  This is a scroll I was given a couple years ago, but the translation was much more basic.

When you roll over the Translation (roll over) button, the text "calligraphy" should popup.  I'm not sure why, but it might not work in all browsers.  What browser are you using?

Anyone else having this problem?

calkins,

Thanks.Do you have any wise Chinese sayings about patience? I just tried it again and it worked.Funny thing is I have tried rolling over this one several times and also same button on your other posts several times and it never worked for me.I think the problem lay in that I rolled over the correct button first but as I didn't get an immediate response and wasn't certain that was the right spot to roll over I was rolling over lots of other spots on the post also.I just needed to let it hover in the one spot for longer [even rolling back and forth over that button doesn't bring it up;I had to stay stationary ].Firefox btw.

Oh yes, I noticed that too.  I think the cursor has to hover in the same spot for a couple seconds...which is hard to do in these "Now now now",  "I want it yesterday" times.  If only we could slow down a bit!  Thanks for your input.