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

In the ballad 孔雀东南飞, the piebald horse 踯躅青骢马, paces and lingers, reluctant to carry its mistress away from the home she loves. 踯躅 is that hesitating tread, the root of 踯 on its own, to loiter in doubt. The character holds the pause before a hard leaving. The lingering horse is the poem's image for a heart that will not move on.

Common words & phrases

• 踯躅 hesitate · linger · pace

Read the story behind the character

At a doorway, a reluctant traveler 踯躅, lingers, with a packed bag while a buyer 踯躅, hesitates, before a purchase and a dog 踯躅, paces, at the gate. The ballad's bereaved horse has become any soul that cannot quite take the step. 踯躅 is the foot that questions where it goes. The hesitation at a gate is the ballad's bereaved beast in a human shape.

Why this character belongs on skin

There is a pacing that animals do before storms, that men do outside hospital doors, that lovers do on the far side of a wall from the person they cannot yet face. This character — doubled in the old texts with its twin — is that circuit: the foot radical carrying a sound of clinging, going and returning, going and returning. The Buddha's tutors described him pacing the grove on the night he chose to leave his kingdom, and every great decision has kept that rhythm since. Pacing is prayer without theology, the body arguing with fate step by step. If you have circled a decision until it wore a groove in you, this mark is yours. It honors the hovering, the almost, the courage still being assembled in your legs — and the moment the pacing stops, and the door finally opens.