The Calligrapher — Lǐ Yōng 李邕

Tang running-script master famed for his stele inscriptions.

Tang calligrapher (678–747), master of running script — known for 《麓山寺碑》（李北海）. Tang dynasty

Cultural Story

The Chu Ci, in 湘君, has the wanderer 搴芙蓉兮木末, pluck the lotus from the treetop where it cannot grow, the impossible gathering that stands for a love reaching the wrong way. 搴 is the upward pull, the hand seizing what is just out of nature's order, and the lotus at the treetop was really the lover himself, reaching where no root had ever agreed to send him.

Common words & phrases

• 搴旗 capture a flag
• 搴取 pluck · pull up

Read the story behind the character

A soldier 搴旗, captures the enemy's banner; a forager 搴取s the high branch. The lotus is a flag now. The upward pull is the same, whether it grasps an impossible flower or merely tears the standard from a falling foe, the hand always reaching above its station, and the flag is only the lotus, dyed red and nailed to a pole.

Why this character belongs on skin

A hand reaching up—that is 搴, the gesture frozen in ink. In Qu Yuan's ancient verse, the exile poet wades into the river shallows to pluck orchids and lotus for his beloved, his hand rising out of the water with the flower dripping light. Elsewhere the word hardens into war: to 搴 the enemy's banner is to rip victory from the field with your own arm. One character, two hands—one tender, one triumphant—both reaching. There is a truth in that doubling. What we most desire requires the same motion whether it is a flower or a flag: the stretch beyond what is comfortable, the risk of the deep water. The Chu poet drowned in the end, some say, refusing to let the world sully him; but his plucked flowers have lasted twenty-three centuries. Let this character be your own raised hand—toward beauty, toward the thing worth seizing—and remember that every good life includes at least one reckless, reaching moment.