However, Bao's reputation is earned mostly for being a calligrapher and historian of calligraphy. He wrote a book "Yizhou Shuangji" (艺舟双楫, Two Oars for the Boat of Art) in 1844 on Wei style character formation. Bao was also known in the late Qing to be an anti-foreign patriot and an extreme hardliner in the opium debates and the first Anglo-Chinese war of 1839-42. In China, Bao Shichen is well-known as an anti-foreign-capitalist advocate. He deeply criticized Opium War and exposed the judicial darkness during the war.