The Calligrapher — Zhì Yǒng 智永

Sui monk who spread Wang Xizhi's art via his 'Thousand Characters'.

Sui calligrapher (生卒年不详（陈/隋）), master of regular script/cursive script — monk and seventh-generation descendant of Wang Xizhi who wrote a thousand copies of the Thousand Character Classic to pass the family hand down. Sui dynasty

Cultural Story

狸 names the wildcat and, by extension, the fox; 山海經 and folk tales made the 狐狸 a shape-shifting spirit who seduces or tests humans. Farmers feared the 狸 stealing poultry, yet honored its cleverness. 莊子 mentions the 狸狌, a cat-like beast darting after rats through the night.

Common words & phrases

• 狐狸 fox
• 狸猫 civet cat
• 海狸 beaver
• 狸子 leopard cat

Read the story behind the character

Children hear of the 狐狸 (fox) spirit in cartoons, while a 狸猫 (civet cat) might raid the backyard at dusk. A 海狸 (beaver) builds dams in nature documentaries, and a spotted 狸子 (leopard cat) hides in southern forests. The word links storybook magic with real, whiskered backyard visitors.

Why this character belongs on skin

In the grain of old woods there moves a creature the Chinese call 狸, the wildcat-fox who steals fish and slips between worlds. She is not the fairytale beast of curses but a survival artist, patient at the river, clever beyond her size. The Daoists admired her because she does not fight the current; she reads it. To ink 狸 is to claim a quieter kind of power, the fox who outwits the tiger, who escapes the trap by never trusting the obvious. She teaches that smallness is not weakness, that the one who watches from the reeds often sees what the hunter misses. There is desire in her too, the fox who moves like she knows a secret about your body. Wear her as a totem of cunning and appetite, of the wild that refuses domestication. The mark is a reminder that you, too, can vanish when the world gets loud, and return only when it is worth your rare and deliberate presence.