The Calligrapher — Chén Jìrú 陈继儒

Ming literati master of elegant running script.

Ming calligrapher (), master of running script — known for 《妮古录》. Ming dynasty

Cultural Story

The form set a beast under a net, 兽, the quarry driven in the hunt. The Odes list 禽兽 taken at the royal park. A 猛兽 kept behind a moat guarded the prince's menagerie. To be called 兽 was the worst of insults — lower than the wild thing itself.

Common words & phrases

• 野兽 wild beast · wild animal
• 禽兽 birds and beasts · brute
• 猛兽 ferocious beast · predator
• 走兽 beasts · four-legged animals
• 兽类 beasts · animals
• 兽药 veterinary drug · animal medicine

Read the story behind the character

A 野兽 stray waits at the zoo fence; a farmer buys 兽药 for the sick sow. The park signs 兽类, keep out. A boy reads of 走兽 in a picture book. The 猛兽 enclosure closes at dusk. The word 禽兽 is flung in a row, meaning someone behaved below the animals.

Why this character belongs on skin

Beneath the manners runs the older blood. Shòu is the beast, the wild thing with neither contract nor conscience, governed only by hunger, weather, and the moon. The sages feared it and fed it in the same breath; the Daoist knew the animal was not the enemy but the root, the vitality the civilized man borrows and pretends to have invented. To wear shòu is to stop apologizing for the creature underneath the citizen: the jealousy, the hunger, the glorious refusal to be tame. It is not a license to harm but an honesty about what must be reckoned with. A man marked with this character has made peace with his own wilderness. Let it sit low on the body, near the belly or thigh, where the oldest instincts keep their den, claimed and not disowned.