The Calligrapher — Wáng Huīzhī 王徽之

Jin calligrapher of cursive script, Wang Xizhi's son famed for the New-Moon Letter (Xinyue tie).

Jin calligrapher (), master of cursive script — known for 王羲之之子. Jin dynasty

Cultural Story

The moon, the old story goes, holds a 玉兔 pounding the elixir of immortality with a mortar — so Li Bai asks the toad and the rabbit who lives there. The character pictures a running hare with a tail. Hunters in the Shi Jing net 兔 in winter fields. A white hare was a token of long life carried at New Year.

Common words & phrases

• 兔子 rabbit · hare
• 白兔 white rabbit
• 玉兔 jade rabbit (moon)
• 兔毛 rabbit fur

Read the story behind the character

A girl keeps a pet 兔子 in a hutch by the balcony; a knitter wears a 兔毛 sweater, soft and warm. The bakery sells 白兔 shaped buns at breakfast. On Mid-Autumn packaging the 玉兔 stares back from the moon, printed beside the date, a picture children trace with a finger.

Why this character belongs on skin

In the cold light of the moon, a small shape pounds medicine with a mortar, and has for three thousand years. 兔 is the rabbit, the creature the Chinese placed on the lunar surface long before the West imagined a man there. It is the timid one, yes, but also the swift one, the one who slips the snare by being alert where others sleep. The Daoist sees the rabbit as pure yin—the quiet, the receptive, the soft footfall before dawn. To wear 兔 is not to be prey but to be awake: to know the predator's hour and move before it. It is the long ear tuned to danger, the bound that covers ground no horse could. Let it mark your wrist like a pulse, a reminder that gentleness and survival are the same thing. Some carry the tiger; you carry the creature that outlives it by simply paying attention. This is the mark of the watchful heart.