The Calligrapher — Ōuyáng Xún 欧阳询

Tang regular-script master whose 'Ouyang style' is a basic learning model.

Tang calligrapher (557–641), master of regular script/running script — Tang codifier of regular script; crisp, architectural strokes you could measure with a ruler. Tang dynasty

Cultural Story

厝 meant to set a thing in place. In Fujian and Taiwan an ancestral house is still a 祖厝, and a coffin laid above ground awaiting a grave is a 浮厝. The strategist Jia Yi wrote of placing a brazier beneath a stack of faggots -- 厝火积薪 -- a danger unseen because it had not yet caught. The word holds both placing and peril.

Common words & phrases

• 浮厝 temporary burial · coffin awaiting burial
• 厝火积薪 to put fire under faggots (danger)

Read the story behind the character

In a village a 浮厝 waits in the side yard until the grave is ready. Commentators reach for 厝火积薪 when a bank's risk sits quiet but unfixed. The word is rare in speech yet exact when it appears: a thing set down provisionally, or a hazard laid where no one yet sees the smoke. It names a placement that has not found its final rest.

Why this character belongs on skin

There is a word for what we do with both stones and the dead. 厝 means to place, to set down deliberately—but in Fujian it carries the tenderer duty of laying a coffin in temporary rest, awaiting the final grave. The classic story is of a man worried his mountain was too near the gate; the fool of the northern mountain simply began moving it, one basket at a time, certain his descendants would finish. Persistence as faith. 厝 is the gesture beneath both tales: to commit a thing to its position and let time take over. Placement is a form of hope. Put it where you can see it. Let it settle in. The men of that famous story moved a mountain basket by basket, generation by generation, until heaven sent help out of respect. You cannot finish everything, but you can set each thing down in the right spot and trust the slow arithmetic of persistence.