The Calligrapher — Dǒng Qíchāng 董其昌

Late-Ming theorist and running-script master who shaped later taste.

Ming calligrapher (1555–1636), master of running script/regular script — late-Ming connoisseur-critic of understated, misty elegance. Ming dynasty

Cultural Story

The Cupwort poem in the Book of Songs bids a weary host, 'Let me simply ladle from that rhinoceros geng,' a great rhinoceros-horn goblet of bronze. Centuries later Ouyang Xiu described a happy feast where 'cups and tally-sticks crossed and mingled', geng chou jiao cuo. The character names the heaviest, most festive of drinking vessels, the one brought out when ordinary cups will not do. To geng was to drink in company, aloud, with the whole table in view.

Common words & phrases

• 觥筹交错 lively drinking · cups and chips crossing
• 觥杯 wine cup

Read the story behind the character

A museum of bronzes displays a geng bei, an ancient goblet, under glass; a banquet reaches its loud peak with geng chou jiao cuo, cups and chips crossing, as guests toast across the table. The character belongs to celebration rather than solitude, the wedding, the reunion, the award dinner. It preserves the shape of a feast where drinking is public and generous, and where the cup raised is also a small proof of friendship.

Why this character belongs on skin

Before goblets there were horns — and this is the horn raised high, the ritual drinking vessel of the Zhou kings, sometimes cast in bronze as a beast with a lid for a head, wine-dark and animal. Gong-chou: to clink and cross cups, the old phrase for banquet, for the moment strangers become friends and enemies temporarily lay it down. This is a character of appetite made ceremonial — the warmth of wine, the fire, the meat, the laughter that gets loud enough to embarrass the neighbors. Christianity has its wedding at Cana, water to wine; Confucius drank, but never to slurring — measure in everything, even joy. The gong says: pleasure, but with style. Carve it where you'd raise the glass — the forearm, the flexed line of it. Then find your people, pour generously, and drink to being alive.