The Calligrapher — Wáng Chǒng 王宠

Ming Suzhou literatus, one of the 'Three Wu Masters'; famed for ethereal small regular script.

Ming calligrapher (1494–1533), master of running script/regular script — known for 《游包山集》. Ming dynasty

Cultural Story

To 捋 is to stroke a thing smooth from base to tip, the beard or the wheat-ear drawn flat by the fingers. The old poems show the old man 捋 his white whiskers in thought; the gesture is patience made visible on the face, and the white whiskers were the only beard the poet trusted to think slowly enough to be worth the stroking.

Common words & phrases

• 捋袖 roll up sleeve
• 捋虎须 tweak the tiger's whiskers · court danger
• 捋顺 smooth out · straighten

Read the story behind the character

You 捋起 the sleeve to work; a dare is 捋虎鬚, stroking the tiger's whiskers, courting death; a knot is 捋順. The white beard is a tiger now. The stroke from base to tip is the same, whether tidying a sleeve or tempting a beast you should leave alone, and the tiger's whiskers are only the beard, grown teeth and a worse temper.

Why this character belongs on skin

The hand along the beard of a thinker mid-thought; fingers drawn down a stem of wheat, threshing nothing, simply feeling the grain fill; a palm smoothing the mane of a horse that has finally stopped shying. This is the character's whole meaning — to stroke, to smooth, the motion of making calm with the hand. It appears in the old phrase for talking something over gently, untangling it strand by strand, which is how every real negotiation and every real love actually proceeds. Force cuts; smoothing persuades. The Taoists built an entire art around it — water wearing stone, the hand that yields and therefore wins. There is also the warning in the phrase for courting danger: some tigers you do not stroke. To wear this character is to declare your method: that you will handle difficult things — people, grief, your own mind — the way you would calm a horse, with patience and the flat of the hand. Not every knot is meant to be cut. Most are meant to be smoothed.