The Calligrapher — Wáng Sēngqián 王僧虔

Southern Qi calligrapher and theorist; author of the Encomium on Brush Intention (Biyi Zan).

南朝齐 calligrapher (), master of regular script/running script — known for 《太子舍人帖》. Southern Qi dynasty (Southern Dynasties)

Cultural Story

Wu Dalang peddled steamed cakes through the lanes of the Water Margin, a xiao fan with a shoulder pole and a cry, and his small trade became the stuff of legend. The character fan is that dealer, the shang fan who works the street and the fan zi who traffics in worse goods. From the novel's stall the word passed to the smuggler and the hawker alike, the man who sells what he carries.

Common words & phrases

• 贩卖 peddle · sell · traffic
• 小贩 peddler · street vendor · hawker
• 商贩 vendor · peddler · trader
• 贩子 dealer · trafficker · monger
• 走私贩 smuggler · contraband dealer

Read the story behind the character

A xiao fan wheels the day's fruit to the corner, and a shang fan haggles for the lot at dawn. The news names a zou si fan caught at the border, and a fan zi of fake goods is fined. The character fan still marks the seller on the move, from the honest pole to the crooked deal.

Why this character belongs on skin

Before the dawn he loads the pole across his shoulders and walks the dusty roads between villages, selling what he carries and carrying what he sells. 贩 is the peddler, the wanderer-merchant who belongs to no stall, only to the road and the weight he bears. There is a freedom in it that the settled never taste, the mornings owed to no one, the atlas written in his own footprints. And there is a loneliness, the price of movement. The Daoist sage, too, was a kind of 贩, carrying emptiness from town to town and calling it the greatest goods. To wear this character is to claim the road as your country, to be the one who passes through and leaves something behind. Let it travel your skin like a packstrap, a small mark that says you were a merchant of your own strange and precious wares, and the road was enough.