The Calligrapher — Fàn Chéngdà 范成大

Song poet-calligrapher famed for running script; one of the Southern Song's Four Great Poets.

Song calligrapher (), master of running script — known for 《中流一壶帖》. Song dynasty

Cultural Story

梅 is the plum, the blossom that flowers on bare branches in deepest winter — the painter's shorthand for courage, the 梅花 the first promise that spring is coming. The 詩經 eats 梅子 in summer; the gentlemen of the 宋 made the plum their emblem of integrity under snow that will not bend.

Common words & phrases

• 梅花 plum blossom
• 杨梅 red bayberry · waxberry
• 梅子 plum
• 腊梅 wintersweet
• 梅毒 syphilis

Read the story behind the character

梅 is the bloom and the berry: 梅花 the five-petal flower on a New Year card, 梅子 the sour plum a soda is flavored with, 杨梅 the red bayberry of June. 腊梅 is the yellow wintersweet; 梅毒, unhappily, is syphilis. The character is the noble blossom and a clinical term sharing one ancient tree in the courtyard.

Why this character belongs on skin

When everything else has surrendered to winter, the plum opens — small, fierce, pink against the snow, as if it chose the cold on purpose. 梅 is the flower that refuses to wait for permission from the seasons. The Chinese poets toasted it as the friend who shows up when all the fair-weather blooms have fled. To ink this character is to mark the part of you that blooms in hardship, that finds a kind of joy precisely where joy is not supposed to grow. Perseverance is a dull word until you watch a plum tree flowering in a blizzard; then it becomes a form of courage. Carry 梅 and you carry the knowledge that your best self may come out not in the warm easy years but in the ones that tried to kill you.