The Song dynasty calligrapher who wrote the famous running-script piece The Cold Food Observance was Su Shi.
Su Shi, also known by his literary name Su Dongpo, created The Cold Food Observance, or Hanshitie, during his exile in Huangzhou. The work consists of poems expressing his loneliness, frustration, and melancholy around the Cold Food Festival. Its emotional intensity is visible in the changing size, spacing, pressure, and rhythm of the brushwork.
The piece is written in xingshu, or running script, a form that balances legibility with fluid movement. It is less connected and abbreviated than cursive script, yet freer and more expressive than regular script. Su Shi’s calligraphy is often valued precisely because it combines technical control with the personality of a scholar-official confronting hardship.
The Cold Food Observance is frequently grouped with major masterpieces of Chinese calligraphy. It is sometimes discussed alongside works by Huang Tingjian and Mi Fu, fellow Northern Song masters, but neither of those calligraphers wrote this particular piece.