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

感 is the stir that passes between things. The 易經 speaks of 感应, the resonance of heaven and earth, and the word always implies one body moving another. The heart with 咸, all, is feeling that reaches everywhere at once. It is influence felt rather than reasoned.

Common words & phrases

• 感觉 feeling · sensation · to feel
• 感情 emotion · feeling · affection
• 感谢 to thank · gratitude · thanks
• 感动 moved · touched · to affect
• 感受 to feel · experience · impression
• 感叹 to sigh · to lament · exclamation

Read the story behind the character

感 is the whole emotional circuit: 感觉 the touch, 感情 the bond, 感谢 the thanks you owe. 感动 is the ad that wants your tears, 感受 the review's verdict. It names both the prick of sensation and the debt of gratitude, often in the same grateful sentence.

Why this character belongs on skin

Under the heart radical, a mouth; above it, a hand—this character is the whole apparatus of being moved. 感 is not passive feeling; the classics use it for resonance, like a bell sounding when its twin is struck across a valley. The Doctrine of the Mean says sincerity moves heaven and earth, and this is the word it uses: 感, things answering things. You have felt it—that sudden aching quickening when music finds the bruise, when a stranger's grief becomes yours. To wear 感 is to declare yourself porous, alive, struck and sounding. It is the opposite of armor, and braver. Place it over the chest, where the heart radical belongs. Let the world strike you. The Chinese medical classics went further, insisting that emotion is not private weather but resonance—between your body and the season, the hour, the people in the room. Nothing, they warn, ever feels alone. Answer.