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

The Shuowen split the chase: zhu for driving beasts from cover. Qin-era essays turned it grand — the deer of empire loosed, 'the realm together hunted it' — and zhu kept both meanings: pursue, and one-by-one.

Common words & phrases

• 逐渐 gradually · little by little · by degrees
• 追逐 to chase · to pursue · to seek
• 逐步 step by step · gradually · progressively
• 驱逐 to expel · to drive out · deport
• 角逐 to contend · to compete · contest
• 逐日 day by day · daily

Read the story behind the character

Zhu orders modern sequences and rivalries: zhujian (gradually) improving your Chinese, zhubu (step by step) clearing the backlog, zhuri (day by day) gains in the savings app, zhuzhu (chase) the last bus, jue zhu (contend) for the contract. The hunter's Beast Chase is now a project plan.

Why this character belongs on skin

There is a dignity in the chase that the catching never has. The character shows a beast driven before the foot, the long pursuit of something that will not stand still — a deer through the winter wood, a desire down the years. The Daoist warns that the man who chases two rabbits catches neither, yet the heart is rarely so disciplined. To pursue is to confess that you are still moving, still hungry, still unwilling to sit down in the warm room of what you already have. The Christian pilgrim walked his whole life toward a city he would not see; the pursuit was the point, not the gate. A tattoo of this word is for the restless, the ones who measure a life in distance covered rather than ground held. Let it mark you as a hunter of the unfinished, a body in motion by design. The quarry may escape; the running is yours, and that is enough.