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

Li Bai, the Banished Immortal of the Tang, made wine the companion of his verse, and in Bring in the Wine he laughs that the river of sorrow must be dammed with a draft ten thousand cups deep. The 酒 of his line is friendship, defiance, and moonlight on the page. No character wears the scent of poetry more openly than this one shaped like a vessel on a stand.

Common words & phrases

• 喝酒 drink alcohol
• 啤酒 beer
• 酒店 hotel · wine shop
• 白酒 liquor · baijiu
• 酒杯 wine cup
• 红酒 red wine

Read the story behind the character

A backyard grill fills with 啤酒 and 白酒 as friends clink 酒杯, and a hotel named 酒店 lights its sign for travelers who drank too well at dinner. A shop chills its 红酒 for the weekend. The 喝酒 that loosens the evening now spills across a patio and a lobby, the old vessel-word poured into bottles, glasses, and the name above a stranger's bed.

Why this character belongs on skin

Take the grain, take the water, take time and the slow alchemy of rot that becomes joy, and you have 酒—the liquor that loosens the tongue, warms the chest, and opens the door the mind keeps locked. Since the earliest feasts it has been the bond of oath and friendship, the pour that seals a vow, the cup raised to the dead and the beloved alike. The poet Li Bai drank to the moon and called it brother; the warrior drank before the charge. To wear this is to honor the sacred recklessness, the courage that only surfaces when the guard is down. Let the mark sit where a toast would touch, a pledge to the moments you stopped calculating and lived. The ink is the last drop, kept, the one drink that never leaves the blood—proof you once raised the cup and meant it.