Hi, elohello. What do you mean by "calligraphy"? Is it refer to the art form? All Chinese native speakers are able to read 楷书 and 行书, two basic forms of the Chinese calligraphy, because we are using them in our daily life. Once trained, Chinese can easily read 草书, which is a bit unreadable. Only professors can completely read 小篆 and other forms of calligraphy. most people, however, can read the ancient Chinese used two thousands years ago. named 文言, its vocabulary is seen in Japanese and other Asian languages.

Thanks Eden, but are you able to read these characters, do they have a meaning? Is it some kind of proverb? Or even you as a "modern" chinese speaker are not able to read/understand what is written here?

Calligraphy is a specific artistic form of characters that exist in China , also in surrounding countries which are effected by Chinese culture. Typically , it has certain stroke , structure and wrote with writing brush. Sometimes it seems like a painting. People call it as a whisht painting, dance and music. Besides, it evolve and adjust to survive and remain effective . Characters you could see and use today is more easy , concisely. So calligraphy literally cast a very long shadow. In this picture that you show us is one form of calligraphy called cursive script. For the most part, we use running script in our daily lives.

trying to figure out why the image is not diplayed!