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

爵 was a bronze wine cup and a noble rank. The Shang and Zhou cast 爵 vessels for ritual toasts to ancestors; holding one marked rank at court. The Zhou conferred 爵位 peerage, duke, marquis, viscount, and paid 爵禄 rank and salary. The Shijing toasts from a 爵; the historian tallies who gained or lost title. Cup and class were one vessel of honor.

Common words & phrases

• 爵位 nobility rank · peerage · title · rank
• 公爵 duke · ducal · noble · prince
• 爵士 jazz · knight · sir · nobleman
• 官爵 official rank · title · office · nobility
• 爵禄 rank and salary · nobility and pay · office · emolument
• 子爵 viscount · noble · title · lord

Read the story behind the character

We meet 爵 in titles: a 公爵 duke, a 子爵 viscount, the 爵位 nobility rank of old Europe and China alike. 爵士 means both a knight and jazz, a noble sound. Officials chased 官爵 office and rank, paid as 爵禄 emolument. Costume dramas turn on who holds the 爵, and we joke a promotion is our modern peerage.

Why this character belongs on skin

Before it meant nobility, 爵 was a bronze cup with three blade-like legs and a long spout, warmed over fire in Shang dynasty rituals three thousand years ago. Wine was lifted first to the ancestors, then to living lords, and the vessel gleamed at the center of every covenant and every conquest. From the cup came the title—公爵, duke—and the whole ladder of rank that men climbed, schemed for, and died holding. But there is an intoxicating ambiguity built into the thing, deliberate or not: honor is a drink, nobility is something you raise to your lips, and every title ever conferred is one ceremony away from empty. Empires issued them; empires rescinded them; the bronze outlived everyone. Ink 爵 and you carry the oldest vessel of ambition—the cup raised in triumph and drained in grief, always handed with both hands, always, in the end, set down.