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

扒 is a vernacular hand — to cling, to dig, to strip. The classics had no place for it; the markets and the docks made it mean the pickpocket's slide and the laborer's scoop. The hand with 八, to divide, is the gesture that separates you from your purse. It is the low, useful grab.

Common words & phrases

• 扒手 pickpocket
• 扒开 push aside · dig open
• 扒饭 shovel rice
• 扒拉 push aside

Read the story behind the character

扒 is the street word: 扒手 the hand in your pocket, 扒开 the bushes you push aside, 扒饭 the hurried shovel of rice. 扒拉 is the flick that moves a thing. It names the cling and the dig, the theft and the snack, the gesture of the person in a hurry.

Why this character belongs on skin

扒 is to grip and hold — to cling, to pull yourself up by, to strip away what covers. A hand on the edge of a cliff; fingers in the fabric of someone leaving; the desperate, tender act of holding on when letting go would be easier. Its root is the hand, and the honesty of 扒 is that it names our most undignified love: the refusal to release. To wear it is to admit you have clung, that some things were worth the ache in the fingers. Place it where you hold the world — the palm, the wrist. Let it say you stayed, that you pulled yourself up one grip at a time, that you have stripped away the false to reach the true. Not graceful. Human. The hand that will not open is also the hand that saves you.