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

A spoken character, 揪 is the hard grip that takes hold and will not open, the hand 揪ing the collar to keep the man from leaving. The books said 執 or 捉; 揪 is the tighter, angrier closing, the one born of fear that the thing will get away, and the collar that would not release was really the hand admitting it had nothing else left to hold.

Common words & phrases

• 揪心 anxious · to worry
• 揪住 to grab · to seize hold
• 揪辫子 to seize fault · to nitpick

Read the story behind the character

A mother is 揪心, anxious to the chest; a guard 揪住s the thief; a critic 揪辮子, seizes the fault. The collar is a heart now. The grip that will not open is the same, whether it holds a fugitive, a worry, or merely the small mistake a superior means to punish, and the heart is only the collar, worn on the inside where the critic cannot see.

Why this character belongs on skin

The child's fist in the storm closes on the parent's coat and will not open, and in that small violence is the whole human argument for holding on. To clutch is to seize and not release, the hand that finds what matters and refuses the wind its victory. The wrestlers of the old markets grabbed the belt and would not let go; the drowning man grabs the oar and becomes, for a moment, stronger than the sea. There is a clutch that is fear, and a clutch that is love, and sometimes they are the same hand. We wear our devotion like a grip that whitens the knuckles. To mark yourself with this is to admit you are not the drifting kind, that some things you will seize and keep against the world. Let the ink be the fist. What you hold, you have already chosen.