The Calligrapher — Wèi Guàn 卫瓘

Wei calligrapher with Suo Jing as 'Two Wonders' of cursive; made willow-leaf seal script

三国魏 calligrapher (), master of cursive script/柳叶篆 — known for 与索靖并称二妙. Wei kingdom (Three Kingdoms)

Cultural Story

The Han shu sketches the wan ku zi di, the youths in silk trousers, the spoiled sons of the wealthy who never faced a field or a frontier, their comfort worn literally on the leg. The ku, the trouser, was the mark of a class that could afford softness. The phrase outlived the dynasty as a jab at idle riches.

Common words & phrases

• 裤子 trousers
• 短裤 shorts
• 长裤 trousers
• 内裤 underpants
• 棉裤 padded trousers

Read the story behind the character

A drawer holds ku zi trousers, duan ku shorts for summer, and chang ku full-length for work, while the lingerie shelf stocks nei ku underpants and the winter box a pair of mian ku padded trousers. The character names the garment split for two legs, the daily wear from the playground to the coldest farm.

Why this character belongs on skin

The humble radical for cloth stitched to a sign for storehouse beside it: the garment nearest the skin and least likely to be praised. Yet think what trousers have witnessed — miles walked, knees in garden soil, the nervous shifting of a first date, hands jammed in pockets against cold and against courage. Chinese children once wore open-backed pairs; emperors wore silk ones under dragon robes; everyone, everywhere, begins each day the same way, one leg then the other, which may be the most democratic sentence in the human wardrobe. Humor is a kind of honesty, and honesty is a kind of grace, and few characters carry both this lightly. A tattoo of it is a wink pressed into flesh — sensual in its closeness, ordinary in the best sense, an amusement you will still enjoy at seventy. Few marks are this intimate, this amused, this permanently dressed.