The Calligrapher — Lín Zǎo 林藻

Tang calligrapher of running script, famed for the Shenwei Letter (Shenwei tie).

Tang calligrapher (), master of running script — known for 《深慰帖》. Tang dynasty

Cultural Story

Zhuangzi's cook Ding carved an ox for Lord Wenhui with such ease that the Lord saw in it the Way itself. 'I meet the joints with the spirit, not the eye,' says the cook, and the ox falls apart without a blade dulled. The parable of pao ding jie niu makes jie, to untie, to loosen, to understand, the art of finding the seams in things. The character shows ox horns and hands at work, dividing what seemed indivisible.

Common words & phrases

• 解决 solve · resolve · settle
• 了解 understand · know · find out
• 解释 explain · interpret · clarify
• 解放 liberate · emancipate · free
• 见解 view · opinion · understanding
• 分解 decompose · break down · resolve

Read the story behind the character

A manager jie jue, resolves, a payroll crisis; a tourist liao jie, gets to know, a strange city; a teacher jie shi, explains, a hard rule. The nation marks jie fang, liberation, each year, and a reader forms a jie jian, a view, after long thought. In a chemistry lab a compound fen jie, decomposes, under heat. From the butcher's blade to the meeting room, the character keeps its old gift for finding the joint and letting the rest fall open.

Why this character belongs on skin

解 is the character of the knot coming undone. Its ancient form is vivid and a little grim: two hands taking a knife to an ox, the butcher of Zhuangzi's famous parable dismembering the carcass along the seams no one else can see. That butcher's blade never dulled, the story says, because he cut where the structure allowed — and so 解 came to mean every intelligent loosening: to untie, to dissect, to explain, to solve, to release. 解开 a knot; 解答 a riddle; 解脱, the Buddhist word for liberation itself — the unbinding. The philosophy hides in the image: force is for amateurs. The master's knife finds the joint and the whole problem falls open, almost gratefully. To wear 解 is to pledge patience with tangles — your own and others' — and to trust that every snarl, examined long enough at the right angle, has a seam waiting for the blade.