The Calligrapher — Huáng Tíngjiān 黄庭坚

Song master of elongated, radical running and cursive script.

Song calligrapher (1045–1105), master of running script/cursive script — Song master of long, sweeping, deliberately stretched running strokes. Song dynasty

Cultural Story

母 in oracle bone script shows a woman with two marks for breasts, the nursing mother. The 說文解字 says '牧也', one who nourishes. Confucian filial piety placed 母 beside 父 as the root of the family; the 詩經 hymns a mother's toil. She is the ground of the household, the first teacher and provider of the home.

Common words & phrases

• 母亲 mother
• 父母 parents · father and mother
• 祖母 grandmother · paternal grandmother
• 母校 alma mater
• 字母 letter · alphabet letter
• 母语 mother tongue · native language

Read the story behind the character

Every Chinese speaker knows 母親 (mother) and 父母 (parents). A graduate returns to 母校 (alma mater, 'mother school'); a child learns 母語 (mother tongue) before any foreign tongue. 祖母 (grandmother) spoils the little ones. The character even slips into 字母 (letters of the alphabet) — the 'mother' marks from which words are built.

Why this character belongs on skin

Before father, before king, before god on the scroll, there was the one who fed you at her body. Mǔ is she. The character is an older picture of a woman with two marks at her breast, the source, the matrix from which everything else pours. In Daoist thought the mother is the dark womb of the world, the uncarved root from which ten thousand things are born. To carry her mark is not sentiment. It is to claim your origin as sacred, to admit you came from tenderness before you came to power. We spend our lives leaving home and never stop needing it. Let this character rest near your heart, a small homeland you can always return to, drawn in ink that will outlast the leaving.