The Calligrapher — Wáng Zhì 王志

Southern Qi calligrapher of running script, author of the Throat-Pain Letter (Houtong tie).

南朝齐 calligrapher (), master of running script — known for 《喉痛帖》. Southern Qi dynasty (Southern Dynasties)

Cultural Story

鄉 showed two men bowing toward a platter of food, the village feast, neighbors bound by the shared meal. The 論語 speaks of 鄉黨, the local community that knew your father. 鄉愁, homesickness for the village you left, is a modern feeling with an ancient shape. The character is the small place and the long pull it keeps on you after the city takes you.

Common words & phrases

• 家乡 hometown · native place
• 乡村 village · countryside
• 故乡 hometown · native place
• 乡镇 township · town and village
• 乡愁 homesickness · nostalgia

Read the story behind the character

家乡 and 故乡 are the town you claim on holidays; 乡村 the rural school the donations target. 乡镇 is the administrative tier between village and city; 乡愁 the ache in a migrant worker's phone video. The character names the place before the metropolis, the meal, the lane, the people who knew you small. It is the gravity of origin, the word for where you are from when from still means something.

Why this character belongs on skin

Turn toward where you came from. Xiāng is the village, the countryside, the native place your bones remember even after the address is forgotten—and in its fuller form it is 'toward,' the lean of the heart homeward. The character once showed two servings of food shared under a roof, the meal that makes strangers kin. We in the West are a rootless people, forever relocating; this glyph insists the homeland lives under the skin regardless. To carry xiāng is to honor the dirt and doorway that formed you, the particular light of the first place. It is a mark for the exile and the rooted alike, for anyone who feels the pull of a somewhere that made them. Quiet, warm, slightly nostalgic, it rests best near the chest—a small character that turns its face, like you, toward the home you carry even when you've left it for good.