The Calligrapher — Wáng Xīzhī 王羲之

The 'Sage of Calligraphy'; his running script has set the standard for 1,700 years.

Eastern Jin calligrapher (303–361), master of running script/cursive script/regular script — the Sage of Calligraphy; his Orchid Pavilion Preface is the most celebrated work in the tradition, and nearly every later master traces lineage to his hand. Eastern Jin dynasty

Cultural Story

The boy Cao Chong weighed an elephant by floating it on a boat and marking the waterline, then loading stones until the line matched, a trick later told in the Three Kingdoms. The character xiang is that great grey shape, the beast too heavy for any scale. From the courtyard the same stroke rose to xian xiang, the outward face of a thing, and tian xiang, the look of the sky.

Common words & phrases

• 大象 elephant
• 现象 phenomenon
• 形象 image · figure
• 象征 symbolize · symbol
• 气象 weather · meteorology
• 景象 scene · sight

Read the story behind the character

A weather app reads the tian xiang before the storm, and a science class charts a xian xiang it cannot yet explain. The child points at da xiang in the zoo, and a brand cares for its xing xiang in the ad. The character xiang still names the beast and the look, the thing seen and the sign of it.

Why this character belongs on skin

The elephant remembers what we beg to forget. 象 is the great beast of the southern forests, and also the image that rises in the mind—the form behind the form, the thing the Daoists say the Dao resembles though it can never be named. In the Yijing, 象 is the image by which the sage reads the world's hidden pattern. To ink 象 is to honor both the memory that endures and the mystery that evades us. There is a Buddhist impermanence in its shadow, a warrior's patience in its gait. It is the largest creature that walks gently. Let this character rest on your shoulder or your back as a totem of the unseen order you trust without proof—the elephant in the room of your own soul, the vast quiet thing that holds your life together. Some truths are too big to say. They are only to be carried.