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

One of the ten heavenly stems, the character 辛 is also the taste of something sharp — bitter, pungent, earned by labor. The Southern Song poet Xin Qiji bore it as his name, a man who spent a life of 辛苦 on a homeland he could not reunite. 辛勤 is diligent toil; 辛酸 the bitter grief; 辛辣 the bite of pepper and of a cutting remark delivered cold.

Common words & phrases

• 辛苦 hard · toilsome · exhausting
• 辛勤 hardworking · diligent
• 辛酸 bitter · sad · miserable
• 辛辣 pungent · spicy · bitter

Read the story behind the character

A cook adds 辛辣 chili to the wok while a nurse admires the 辛勤 of the night shift and a refugee's letter tells of 辛酸 years. The taste 辛苦 of a long climb is felt in the legs the next morning. The stem-sign and the poet's name now season food and feeling alike — the character that marked a day in the calendar still marks the sharp, laborious edge of being alive.

Why this character belongs on skin

The eighth stem of heaven, the mark of the punished man, the taste that stings the tongue and clears the head. Xīn is bitterness and toil — the labor that leaves you hollow at day's end, the pungent edge of a life honestly worked. The ancients set it against ease and called the hard years 辛苦, bitter and laborious, not as complaint but as description of a fate well met. A warrior knows xīn as the price of the road; a farmer as the price of the grain. There is a Christian weight to it too — suffering borne without resentment becomes its own kind of sanctity. To carry this character is to refuse the easy sweetness, to wear the proof that you paid in effort what others borrowed. Let it rest where the body works hardest, a quiet mark that your bitterness was earned, and that it made you.