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

咆 pairs 口 (mouth) with 包 (to wrap, a phonetic), to roar or howl. 詩經 and 楚辭 give the flood or the wounded beast its 咆哮 (roar/rage), and 史記 paints a wronged minister 咆哮 like thunder. 咆哮如雷 (roar like thunder) became the image of furious power. The character is the great voice of nature and rage—the river, the storm, the man who can no longer stay silent under injustice done to him or his kin.

Common words & phrases

• 咆哮 to roar · to rage · to thunder
• 咆哮如雷 to roar like thunder · furious

Read the story behind the character

A coach 咆哮 (roars/rages) at a missed play, and a boss 咆哮如雷 (roars like thunder) over a failed launch. A storm 咆哮 outside the window, and a fan 咆哮 at the referee's call. The character carries modern volume—anger, weather, and passion let loose. It is the loudest edge of feeling, the roar that drowns calm, whether from a person, a crowd, or the sky above a city street.

Why this character belongs on skin

Somewhere in your chest there is weather that has been saving itself. 咆 is the roar — the thunder-bellow, the mouth as storm front, rage with volume and a point. It pairs with a word for howling to make the full fury: the sound a gale makes through a gorge, the sound injustice pulls out of a quiet person. The old texts speak of tigers roaring in their valleys and the whole mountain adjusting; that is the honest use of a roar, not tantrum but announcement — this far, no farther. There is a reason thunder was heaven's own voice in Chinese cosmology: it is what a sky sounds like when it will not be ignored. Most of us were trained to swallow our thunder, and we call the swallowing maturity. A tattoo of 咆 is permission slip and warning label in one: the voice you use when politeness has failed, when the line is finally drawn in ink because everything else failed. Put it over the throat and mean it. The roar does not need to come often. It needs to be believed.