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

The annals have the army that 掠 the border towns, sweeping through for what it could carry, the raid that leaves the roofs smoking. 掠 is the fast pass of the hand over a place, taking and gone. The word is old as cavalry, and the smoke the annals noted was really the only signature the raider bothered to leave the historians.

Common words & phrases

• 掠夺 plunder · loot · pillage
• 掠过 sweep past · skim over
• 抢掠 rob · plunder

Read the story behind the character

A developer 掠奪s the land; a bird 掠過 the water; a mob 搶掠s the shop. The border raid is a hostile bid now. The fast pass of the hand is the same, whether it takes a town, a market, or merely skims a wing across the lake at dusk, and the bid is only the raid, filed with a bank instead of a banner.

Why this character belongs on skin

The swallow takes the insect without breaking its flight, and the whole maneuver is a line drawn once, perfectly, through the air. To sweep past is to touch and move on, to take what is yours without stopping the world. The character is the hand brushing by, the raid that leaves no camp behind. The warriors of the steppe rode this way, and the poet speaks of a glance that steals the heart and is gone. To carry this mark is to honor the part of you that moves with a clean, unhooking grace, that does not cling where clinging would ruin the beauty. It is a small emblem of the掠掠, the skim that is its own kind of possession. Wear it like a wind-line on the skin, the proof that some things are most truly yours exactly because you did not try to keep them.