The Calligrapher — Yán Zhēnqīng 颜真卿

Tang master of robust regular script; co-creator of the enduring 'Yan style'.

Tang calligrapher (709–784), master of regular script/running script — the Tang moral paragon whose upright, muscular regular script became the model of Chinese integrity in writing. Tang dynasty

Cultural Story

亂 is the traditional shape of 乱, two hands snarling the silk, the loom broken, the state undone. The 詩經 closes many odes with a 乱, a summing coda after the song. 亂世 is the age historians dread, when the rites fail and the roads fill with refugees. The character is the same tangled thread as its simplified twin, kept in print and in the classics.

Common words & phrases

• 混亂 chaos · confusion · disorder
• 亂來 to mess around · to act recklessly
• 戰亂 war chaos · war turmoil
• 雜亂 messy · jumbled · disordered
• 亂世 turbulent times · chaotic era

Read the story behind the character

混亂 and 雜亂 are the crowd and the drawer; 亂來 is the warning, do not mess around. 戰亂 is the displacement story; 亂世 the costume drama's backdrop. This form survives in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and classical quotation; the mainland writes 乱. Either way it names the snarl, the broken order, the messy room, the century that would not hold. The hands are still tangling the silk.