The Calligrapher — Shěn Zhōu 沈周

Ming literati patriarch known for gentle, classical running script.

Ming calligrapher (), master of running script — known for 吴门画派之祖. Ming dynasty

Cultural Story

The goddess Nüwa melted five-coloured stones to bu tian, mending the broken sky after the pillars collapsed and the heavens cracked. The myth gives the character its first and grandest job, the repair of the very firmament with patient, piecemeal work. To bu is to close a gap the world had opened.

Common words & phrases

• 补充 supplement · add · complement
• 补偿 compensate · make up
• 补救 remedy · rectify · save
• 补习 remedial · review · tutoring
• 修补 repair · mend · patch
• 弥补 make up · remedy · fill

Read the story behind the character

A tailor xiubu a torn shirt at the market stall, while a teacher tells a thirsty student to buchong his water before sports. The insurer offers buchang for the damaged phone, a tutor gives buxi lessons, and a friend tries to bujiu a ruined evening. The word names every act of making whole what was lacking or broken.

Why this character belongs on skin

Where the cloth tore, the needle returns, and the garment lives again. 补 is to mend, to patch, to make whole by adding what was missing. The character is cloth and a divination—the repair guided as if by fate, the seam that holds because someone cared enough to close it. The Buddhists speak of filling the gaps in the self; the farmer speaks of a coat repaired across a lifetime. There is a tenderness in mending that newness never has—the patch is honest about what broke and proud of what held. To wear 补 is to honor the repairs in yourself, the places you stitched back together and wore anyway. Some people hide their mending. This mark is the opposite, the seam made visible as proof of survival. Let it lie where you were broken and fixed, the patch that became part of the design. Not flawless. Repaired, and therefore more yours. The cloth holds. So do you.