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

又 was a hand, and then "again". Laozi called the mystery "darkened into the dark -- 玄之又玄, the gate of all wonders". The graph traced a hand that reaches once more. In the histories it marks the second of a pair of deeds; in letters 又及 adds a line after the close. The word is the smallest record of repetition.

Common words & phrases

• 又及 postscript · P.S.
• 又称 also called · aka
• 又要 again want · also need
• 又一次 once again

Read the story behind the character

A letter ends with 又及, a postscript dashed off. A shop sign says the brand is 又称 by another name in the south. A delayed train is 又一次 disappointment this month. The word ticks the count of repeats -- of things done again, of names that double, of the extra note scrawled beneath the signature. It is the quiet adverb of recurrence in speech and in print.

Why this character belongs on skin

又 is a hand — the right hand, the one that reaches, repeats, insists. The old pictograph is just a fist with the thumb out, the hand that acts again and again. It also means 'again,' and there is the whole philosophy: life is the same hand doing the same necessary thing one more time. We romanticize the first time, the debut, the spark. But 又 is the second time and the hundredth, the loyalty of repetition. To carry it is to honor the gesture you keep making — the call, the apology, the practice, the return. There is a tenderness in 'again' that 'forever' never catches; forever is a promise, again is a fact. This is the mark for the person who came back. Ink it where your own hand can find it, a small acknowledgment that love and craft are mostly the same muscle moving once more than you thought you could. The hand does not ask why. It simply reaches.