The Calligrapher — Mò Shìlóng 莫是龙

Ming literati calligrapher of vigorous running script.

Ming calligrapher (), master of running script — known for 《画说》. Ming dynasty

Cultural Story

Fu began as the beginning — of a season, of a stalk of grain just showing — and became the polite suffix of a gentleman's courtesy name: Kongming, Yude, and countless 甫s of the classics. Just, newly, barely — 甫 arrived somewhere and 甫 settled down both use it.

Common words & phrases

• 杜甫 Du Fu · poet
• 神甫 priest · Catholic priest
• 台甫 your honorable name · courtesy name

Read the story behind the character

Its immortality is a poet: 杜甫, Du Fu, the sage of poetry, whose lines on war and the poor are recited by every schoolchild. Catholics borrowed the character again for 神甫, priest, so the syllable that once opened harvests now opens sermons too.

Why this character belongs on skin

Fǔ is the just-now — the moment a thing begins, the young man of promise before the world gets at him, the open front of a story not yet written. One of the greatest poets wore it as his name, and maybe that is the whole point: to be, like fǔ, perpetually at the start. We are obsessed with endings and arrivals. Fǔ returns us to the threshold, where nothing is fixed and everything is still possible. A tattoo of fǔ is the choice to stay a beginner — not naive, but undefeated by outcome. The ink is the first stroke of a character never finished, worn near the wrist where a hand begins its work. To carry it is to refuse the settled self, and to keep, at any age, the dignity of the one who has just now begun.