The Calligrapher — Wáng Xīzhī 王羲之

The 'Sage of Calligraphy'; his running script has set the standard for 1,700 years.

Eastern Jin calligrapher (303–361), master of running script/cursive script/regular script — the Sage of Calligraphy; his Orchid Pavilion Preface is the most celebrated work in the tradition, and nearly every later master traces lineage to his hand. Eastern Jin dynasty

Cultural Story

After Buddhism reached China, artisans cut 雕像 and 佛像 into the cliffs at Yungang and Longmen, each 像 a focus for devotion. The "Analects" had already urged, "sacrifice as if present" — 祭如在 — training the mind to meet the absent as if face to face. The word 像 thus bridged the carved stone and the act of regard.

Common words & phrases

• 好像 seem · as if · like
• 图像 image · picture · graphic
• 画像 portrait · drawing · portray
• 雕像 statue · sculpture · carving
• 录像 video · record · tape
• 偶像 idol · icon · image

Read the story behind the character

A phone keeps a 图像 of the receipt; a 录像 captures the break-in. The museum restores a 雕像 of the founder, and a fan edits a 偶像's clip late at night. The word still means the made likeness — a photo, a video, a figure — the copy that stands in for the thing or the person one cannot hold.

Why this character belongs on skin

Under the person-radical, 像 means to resemble—and also the image itself: a portrait, a statue, a reflection. Buddhism imported a whole metaphysics with the phrase 想像, imagination, and with the statues carved into cliff faces at Dunhuang, faces that have watched fourteen centuries of travelers look up. To be like something is to be haunted by it gently—a daughter like her mother, a face like the one in the old photograph. Every icon in every temple was made by a hand copying another hand, back and back, until the chain vanished into heaven—no one the original, everyone the likeness, the holiness undiminished by repetition. The character asks a quiet question: what is the image, and what is the original? Wear 像 and you carry the truth that we are all portraits of something—a parent, a hope, a person we lost—and that resemblance is a kind of love.