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

In the 永字八法, the eight strokes of a character, 撇 is the left-falling flick, the brush swept out and up like a sleeve thrown wide in disdain. Calligraphy begins here, with the stroke that gives a word its first gesture of departure, and the beginner who lingered on the 撇 looked, to the master, like a man reluctant to leave a room he had only just entered.

Common words & phrases

• 撇开 set aside · bypass
• 撇嘴 pout
• 一撇 a left-falling stroke

Read the story behind the character

You 撇開 the side issue; a child 撇嘴, pouts; a character has its 一撇. The calligrapher's flick is a pout now. The left-falling stroke is the same, whether it shapes a character, dismisses a subject, or merely turns a small mouth down at the world's latest disappointment, and the pout is only the stroke, drawn on a face instead of a page.

Why this character belongs on skin

One brushstroke of 撇 is the calligrapher's flick of contempt and grace at once—the stroke that begins 才, talent, and 家, home, yet itself means to abandon. How honest a language is, to make renunciation a component of everything beautiful. 撇开 it, the masters said: cast it aside, the grievance, the title, the second-guessing, and see what remains standing when nothing is being held up. The nun who cuts her hair, the soldier who drops the burning pack, the lover who finally sets the phone face-down—each performs a 撇 with the whole body. There is elegance in letting go that no acquisition ever matches. Calligraphers say you can read a person's entire character in the angle of this single downward sweep. So sweep. Let the ink fall away from itself like a robe sliding off a shoulder.