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

扑 is to lunge and to beat, the body thrown at something. The old hunt tales have the dog 扑 on the quarry, and the word keeps that forward violence. The hand with 卜, an oracle, is the strike aimed by instinct. It is the pounce and the pat, the rush and the slap.

Common words & phrases

• 扑灭 to extinguish · to wipe out
• 扑打 to beat · to pat
• 反扑 to counterattack · to pounce back
• 扑鼻 assailing (smell) · to nose
• 扑通 plop · thud

Read the story behind the character

扑 is the extinguish and the thud: 扑灭 the fire the brigade kills, 扑打 the switch at the mosquito, 反扑 the team that comes back. 扑鼻 is the smell that hits you, 扑通 the sound of the thing in the water. It names the rush that ends a thing or begins a splash.

Why this character belongs on skin

扑 is to lunge, to pounce, to rush at something with the whole body — a moth to the flame, a lover across a room, a hand flung up to catch what is falling. Its energy is forward, helpless, alive. The Buddhists warn against the grasping it names; the poets celebrate it. Desire is 扑 — the refusal to stay still when the heart sees its target. To wear it is to confess you are still capable of the lunge, that you have not been trained out of wanting. Place it where the pulse is fastest. Let it say you would rather be burned than bored, that you have thrown yourself at beautiful things and would do it again. The flame may consume. The moth, at least, died moving toward the light it loved.