There are few artists who can think of poetry as a pair and can write a good calligraphy by hand at the same time. Although being deaf, Chen can recall the sounds of the words and still created wonderful poetry. He wrote with the brush in word after word, which are echo at the bottom of his heart from his childhood. His friend, Chou Meng-Tieh, also a poet, said his works are comparable to Gong Dingzhen’s and Manshu’s.
Chen grew up in a family whose members had been scholar-officials for generations. Even before he was three years old, his mother started teaching him how to read classics and memorize poetry. After he fell out of a tree and lost his hearing at the age of eight, however, he studied traditional ink painting, calligraphy and seal-carving from his father and his friends. Thus from a young age, he was copying the works of various calligraphy masters in order to practice, Because he liked the running standard script of Yan Zhenqing and often copied the calligraphy of Zhao Mengfu and Zheng Xiaoxu, he eventually combined these styles to form his own.
