The Calligrapher — Bèi Yìyuān 贝义渊

Liang calligrapher of the regular-script Xiao Dan Stele, a rare Southern Dynasties monument.

南朝梁 calligrapher (), master of regular script — known for 《始兴忠武王碑》. Liang dynasty (Southern Dynasties)

Cultural Story

Du Fu's thatched cottage lost its roof to an autumn gale, the wind tearing three layers of thatch while village boys ran off with the stalks, and his bitter-funny poem made the humble reed-grass roof the emblem of the poet's poverty and conscience. Sage-kings of old were praised for dwelling in thatched halls with earthen steps.

Common words & phrases

• 茅草 thatch · cogon
• 茅台 Maotai (liquor)
• 茅屋 thatched cottage
• 茅坑 latrine · outhouse
• 前茅 front rank · leading

Read the story behind the character

A tourist site rebuilds Du Fu's thatched cottage in Chengdu and queues visitors past the recreated roof, a liquor from Maotai town trades on its river-valley terroir at auction, a camping guide teaches guests to thatch a shelter, and a workplace joke about being at the front of the queue borrows the ancient military idiom.

Why this character belongs on skin

The thatched roof breathes. The coarse grass pulled from riverbanks and laid by hand once kept the rain off every sage who ever withdrew from court to write by lantern light. Zhuangzi would have laughed at empire from beneath such a roof, free precisely because he owned the wind that passed through it. There is honor in the humble covering, the weed made shelter, the thing the world calls worthless lifted into protection. To mark your skin with this character is to choose the unpriced life, the cottage over the palace, the grass that bends and therefore survives the storm that splinters the oak. It is a quiet vow of independence, inked like a thatch-line across the shoulder: I will not be gilded to be safe. I will be covered by what the earth gives freely, and call it enough.