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

蕤 hangs with drooping abundance — leaves heavy, tassels swaying, things lush past upright. It almost never appears alone: paired as 葳蕤 with 葳, it names foliage and jewels alike in classical verse, from thick garden ferns to the jade ornaments swaying at a lady's sash. Old texts also record 蕤宾 as one of the twelve pitch-pipes of ancient music theory, the note assigned to midsummer — even in music, the character chose the season of maximum green.

Common words & phrases

• 葳蕤 luxuriant · drooping leaves

Read the story behind the character

蕤 keeps its old partner. A novel describes the heroine's hairpins swaying 葳蕤, drooping-rich, as she bows to the empress; a nature writer calls the ravine ferns 葳蕤, luxuriant, after the monsoon. A musicology student meets 蕤宾, the midsummer pitch-pipe, in a lecture on ancient scales and laughs at the same lush syllable. On a quiz show, the panel stumbles exactly where the ancients did — 蕤 is never obvious.

Why this character belongs on skin

This is a character for abundance at its most tender: blossoms so full they bend, petals hanging lush and heavy, the word weiding rui for things delicately, heavily in flower. Tang poets used it for jade curtains trembling with weight, for the down-slant of branches after rain, for beauty too generous to stand upright. There is a philosophy in that droop. What is fullest does not flaunt; it bows. The ripest branch hangs lowest, said the old gardeners, and the Zen masters nodded. This is sensuality without effort, curves under a silk robe, the heat of a July garden at nine at night. To wear this character is to admit that you are in bloom, heavy with it, and that your beauty inclines toward the earth rather than away from it. Grace that leans. Ink it along the side of the ribs, where the body itself arcs and gives.