The Calligrapher — Bèi Yìyuān 贝义渊

Liang calligrapher of the regular-script Xiao Dan Stele, a rare Southern Dynasties monument.

南朝梁 calligrapher (), master of regular script — known for 《始兴忠武王碑》. Liang dynasty (Southern Dynasties)

Cultural Story

A spoken character, 攪 is the stick turning the pot, the hand that will not let a thing settle. The books said 擾 or 拌; 攪 is the plainer stir, the one a cook uses on the broth and a nuisance uses on a peaceable house, and the broth that would have been clear was ruined by the same stick that later ruined the peace, which is why the cook and the nuisance are kin.

Common words & phrases

• 搅拌 stir · mix
• 搅动 stir
• 搅乱 disturb · mess up
• 打搅 disturb · bother

Read the story behind the character

You 攪拌 the paint; a boy 攪亂 the room; a guest 打攪s the host. The broth is a home now. The turning stick is the same, whether it mixes a colour, breaks a calm, or merely interrupts a stranger who was, until this moment, left in peace, and the home is only the pot, bigger and far harder to stir smooth again.

Why this character belongs on skin

The spoon enters the still pond of the broth and the settled separates, the hidden rises, the whole surface learns it was capable of movement. To stir is to disturb the quiet that was only pretending to be peace, to wake what the sediment wanted to keep buried. The poets stirred their wine and found the sorrow they had been avoiding floating up to meet them; the rebels stirred the sleeping city and paid for it with their names. We fear the stirrer in ourselves—the restlessness that will not let the comfortable lie unexamined. Yet nothing sweet is made without the turning. Wear this for the moments you refused the still surface, when you put the stick in and let the truth come up. The pond was never as calm as it looked. Neither were you.