The Calligrapher — Cài Yōng 蔡邕

Han scholar who perfected clerical script and invented flying-white.

Han calligrapher (133–192), master of clerical script/飞白书 — known for 《熹平石经》/ 飞白书. Han dynasty

Cultural Story

塞 means to stop a gap and, as a noun, a frontier pass. The 诗经 speaks of 塞 as filling a breach in the wall; the Han general 卫青 (Wei Qing) pushed the army beyond the 边塞 into the northern steppe. 塞外 (beyond the pass) was where the 长城 met the grass and the wind. 要塞 (fortress) guarded those thresholds of earth and empire.

Common words & phrases

• 堵塞 block · clog · jam
• 塞住 plug · stop up · block
• 边塞 frontier pass · border
• 塞外 beyond the pass · frontier
• 闭塞 blocked · cut off · secluded
• 要塞 fortress · fort · stronghold

Read the story behind the character

A stuffy room is 闭塞 (stuffy, cut off) and needs a window opened; a cork 塞住 (plugs) a wine bottle at dinner. News reports 堵塞 (clog) at a border 要塞 during a holiday rush; 塞外 sells as a tourism brand for the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. The character holds the old double life — the act of plugging and the far place where China met the wind.

Why this character belongs on skin

Same character, two destinies. 塞 is to plug, to stuff, to close a gap—and it is also the frontier, 塞外, the far land beyond the Great Wall's passes, where the wind came off the grasslands carrying wolves and weather. A wall is made of stopping. Every gate is a stopped place that decided, briefly, to allow. The closure and the threshold are one stone thick. The old story knows it: 塞翁失马, the old man at the frontier loses his horse, and the neighbors console him, and the horse returns with stallions, and they congratulate him, and his son breaks a leg, and the conscript officers pass him by. 焉知非福. How do you know it is not blessing? The frontier man understood: fortune and disaster use the same gate, and nobody checks their papers. To wear 塞 is to keep that wisdom on the skin. What blocks you and what admits you wear the same character. Let the loss come; let it stand at the pass; wait to learn what it was. The old man would nod, and pour another cup, and watch the horses.