Eulogy for Burying a Crane and the Art of Chinese CalligraphyEulogy for Burying a Crane (Yi he ming) is perhaps the most eccentric piece in Chinas calligraphic canon. Apparently marking the burial of a crane, the large inscription, datable to 514 CE, was once carved into a cliff on Jiaoshan Island in the Yangzi River. Since the discovery of its ruins in the early eleventh century, it has fascinated generations of scholars and calligraphers and been enshrined as a calligraphic masterpiece. Nonetheless, skeptics