The Calligrapher — Huáng Tíngjiān 黄庭坚

Song master of elongated, radical running and cursive script.

Song calligrapher (1045–1105), master of running script/cursive script — Song master of long, sweeping, deliberately stretched running strokes. Song dynasty

Etymology & Meaning · 字义溯源

2 · The Character: 九 九 (jiǔ, 3rd tone) is the largest single digit and, in Chinese cosmology, the number where yang runs out. The Shuowen Jiezi: 陽之變也。象其屈曲究盡之形 — 'the turning-point of yang; the graph depicts a bending that runs to its very end.' The Liezi (Tianrui) glosses the same idea: 一變而爲七，七變而爲九，九變者，究也 — 'nine is exhaustion.' In the Yijing every unbroken line is called 九 (初九, 九五), and the Qian hexagram's Wenyan closes 乾元用九，天下治也, 'the creative uses nine, and the world is governed.' Hence 九五之尊, the emperor's place, and 九天, the nine heavens. Qu Yuan titled two of the Chuci suites 九歌 and 九章. Kangxi: 2 strokes, 乙部 (name-numerology conventionally counts it as 9). Honest disclosure: 九 is homophonous with 久 'long-lasting', which makes it auspicious at weddings — but 九泉 and 九原 both mean the grave, the netherworld.

Cultural Story

九 was the highest single digit and so the number of fullness, not quite ten, but the reach of counting. 九州 named the nine provinces of the ancient realm, China itself. 九天 was the highest heaven; 九泉 the deepest grave. The 楚辭 climbs 九歌 in nine songs. Nine was the ceiling of the ordinary and the floor of the sacred.

Energy Reading

Fire (火) — as the ultimate yang number

Comparative symbology, not fortune-telling.

Common words & phrases

• 九天 ninth heaven · the sky · the heavens
• 九月 September · ninth month · the ninth month
• 九州 China · the nine provinces · the realm
• 九号 number nine · ninth · the ninth
• 九十 ninety · nine ten · nine tens
• 九泉 underworld · grave · the nether world

Read the story behind the character

九月 is the school's restart; 九号 the bus and the date. 九十 the age nobody expects; 九泉 the underworld in obituaries and ghost stories. 九州 survives as a literary name for the nation; 九天 as the sky in old poems. The number now mostly files the calendar and the queue, but it keeps a faint grandeur, the count that once meant as high and deep as things go.