POETRY OR PENMANSHIP?

While strolling the grounds of the Summer Palace, I came across a few men writing calligraphy on the sidewalks with large sponge brushes dipped in water. A few days earlier I'd passed an old man in a little city park doing the same thing. He was sharing his brush with a younger man and they were taking turns writing on the ground, using the tiled concrete as a guideline. I stopped to watch, and after a while he offered me the brush. When I politely refused, he smiled and wrote something for me on the ground. I hope it was nice. I think it was. He smiled afterwards. I came across it again at the Summer Palace, and as you can see by the picture, I wasn't the only one who stopped to watch. I wondered whether people were admiring the penmanship, or if it was more about the content of his writing. Was it poetry?  I think it had to do more with the calligraphy and the art of his writing. It was probably a little of both. Either way, I think it's awesome, and I realized that there's not much of an equivalent in the US. Do they even teaching cursive handwriting in school these days? It's probably been replaced with classes on smartphone thumb typing. I guess I've got some cool fonts on my computer.