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
億 is the ten-thousand of ten-thousands, a hundred million, the number for things too many to count: stars, grains, the dead. The 詩經 marvels at 億萬, the uncounted plenty. The 說文 reads it as to be at peace with a great number, security in abundance. It is the numeral of the unimaginable sum, the heap where counting gives up.
Common words & phrases
- 亿万 hundreds of millions
- 十亿 one billion
- 亿年 hundred-million years
Read the story behind the character
亿万 is the wealth headline, 亿万富翁, the billionaire. 十亿 is the bailout and the population; 亿年 the geological time in a nature doc. The character is the number for scale itself, the fortune, the epoch, the crowd. You meet it when quantities leave the countable behind, the word that means so many the mind stops. It still marks the abundance the old poets called 億萬, now in bank statements.
Own this character
Purchase delivers the original SVG of this glyph, brushed by Yán Zhēnqīng 颜真卿, ready to place on skin, paper, or screen.