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

屁 is a blunt body word for flatulence; medical texts note it plainly as wind from the bowels. It carried little literary gloss but lived in folk speech, and 放屁 (fart, talk nonsense) became a sharp way to dismiss empty talk as so much hot air from a careless mouth.

Common words & phrases

• 放屁 fart · talk nonsense
• 屁股 buttocks · bottom
• 马屁 flattery

Read the story behind the character

Kids giggle at 放屁 (fart, talk nonsense), and everyone knows 屁股 (buttocks) from childhood scrapes. Sucking up with 马屁 (flattery) is mocked in every office, and the word stays earthy and comic. We use 屁 for both the bodily puff and the verbal one — nonsense is just wind from the mouth.

Why this character belongs on skin

There is a kind of freedom in the thing you cannot pretend does not happen. 屁 is the body's small betrayal, the warm gust that announces you are animal before you are noble. The Daoists laugh here — they prize the uncensored breath, the fart in the temple as proof that nothing is too sacred to be human. To repress it is to build a self of marble that will crack. The warrior who cannot laugh at his own body will not laugh at his own fear, and fear unlaughed becomes cruelty. 屁 is humility with a sound: a reminder that the spirit rides a creature, and the creature is honest. Wear it not as a joke but as a creed — let nothing in you be so polished it forgets it breathes. The ink keeps you real, keeps you near the earth. A small mark for the part of you that will not pretend.