The Calligrapher — Chéng Miǎo 程邈

Qin official credited with systematizing clerical script (lishu), a pivotal step in Chinese writing.

Qin-Han calligrapher (生卒年不详（秦）), master of clerical script — known for 隶书（相传整理八分）. Qin–Han era

Cultural Story

The early form of 它 pictured a snake, 'the other' creeping in the grass, and it served as the neutral third-person until 他 and 她 split off for people. The 'Explaining Graphs' calls it 'a worm.' The graph is a fossil of grammar — the pronoun that was once any creature not us.

Common words & phrases

• 它们 they (objects) · them
• 其它 other things

Read the story behind the character

Pet owners type 它们 for cats and dogs, and forms list 其它 for the remaining options. The character that began as a drawn serpent now marks the non-human and the miscellaneous, the grammatical leftovers a language sorts after people are accounted for.