The Calligrapher — Zhāng Jízhī 张即之

Song master of vigorous regular and running script.

Song calligrapher (), master of regular script/running script — known for 《佛遗教经》. Song dynasty

Cultural Story

Pi exists almost solely to serve its partner: 琵琶, the pear-shaped lute, is an ancient onomatopoeia mimicking the two basic strokes — pi forward, pa back. Bai Juyi's 'Song of the Pipa' fixed the instrument forever in Chinese memory, a moonlit river, a reluctant player, and strings that spoke of exile.

Common words & phrases

• 琵琶 pipa · Chinese lute

Read the story behind the character

The pipa still commands the concert stage and conservatory practice rooms, its-metal strings thundering in 'Ambush from Ten Sides' or sighing in love songs. Yet the character rarely travels alone — write 琵 without 琶 and readers will suspect a typo.

Why this character belongs on skin

Some instruments you play; the pipa you contend with. Held upright on the knee like a small moon of lacquered wood, it answers the fingers with fury or with silk — thunderstorms on four strings, then a whisper like a woman remembering. This character is the first half of its name, the word's opening syllable, and in the old dictionaries both halves trace to the sound of the instrument itself: the plucked voice of silk strings. The Tang poets could not leave it alone. Bai Juyi, exiled on a river at night, heard a stranger play and wrote twenty years of homesickness into one description of her hands. Music, said the Confucians, reveals the state of a heart faster than any confession. To wear this mark is to keep a string taut in yourself. Something in you is always about to sound. The ink is the first note.