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

硫 is sulfur — brimstone, the powder that burns blue. Alchemists knew it intimately: furnace masters mixed it with saltpeter and charcoal toward elixirs and arrived, instead, at gunpowder; physicians prescribed prepared sulfur for skin complaints; and volcanic hot springs steamed with its unmistakable smell, long read as a sign of the earth's hidden fires beneath the bathhouse.

Common words & phrases

• 硫磺 sulfur · brimstone
• 硫酸 sulfuric acid
• 硫化 sulfidation · sulfurization
• 硫黄 sulfur

Read the story behind the character

Sulfur is daily and chemical. Motorists refill 硫酸 (sulfuric acid) in old batteries; rubber is 硫化 (vulcanized) into tires; match heads and fireworks carry the classic smell. Hot-spring towns advertise their sulfur waters, pharmacies sell 硫磺皂 (sulfur soap) for troubled skin, and biology class demonstrates the rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulfide with great courage.

Why this character belongs on skin

The earth exhales a yellow breath and calls it liu — sulfur, brimstone, the smell of the volcano and the hot spring alike. Alchemists chased it as the principle of burning; the sick soaked in its waters and rose healed. It is the element of transformation by heat, the promise that something poisonous can also be a cure if you know the temperature. To wear liu is to honor the fire in the ground of you, the part that burns and cleanses and smells of the world's deep furnace. Let it mark where heat gathers, a quiet pledge that you are not afraid of your own combustion, that you will let the sulfur rise, scald a little, and leave you purified. The spring is holy precisely because it stings. So are you.