The Calligrapher — Mǐ Fú 米芾

Song eccentric genius of dynamic, 'flying' running script.

Song calligrapher (1051–1107), master of running script — Song eccentric genius ('crazy Zhang, idiot Mi') whose running script alternates discipline with glee. Song dynasty

Cultural Story

The 'Book of Songs' warns that many a venture begins well but few end so, '靡不有初，鲜克有终' — a line that fixed 靡 as the marker of what spreads and fails. The 靡费 of a court and the 风靡 of a doomed fashion both drew on that old warning. To call a habit 靡 was to say it bloomed wide and then consumed the ground it covered.

Common words & phrases

• 靡费 waste · squander · extravagance
• 萎靡 dispirited · listless · dejected
• 风靡 fashionable · popular · in vogue
• 靡烂 rotten · decayed · corrupt

Read the story behind the character

A mall crowd follows a style that has 风靡 the city, the 靡费 of the launch plain in the window displays. At the clinic a patient feels 萎靡 and asks whether the energy drink is to blame, the 萎靡 traced to poor sleep. A buyer regrets the 靡烂 of the cheap shoes after one wet week, and the 靡费 of the season shows in the returns pile.

Why this character belongs on skin

There is a word for the way tall grass lies down under wind—a soft capitulation, luxurious rather than defeated—and that word is mí. From it comes mílì, sensuous to the point of decadence: velvet drapery, late-night jazz, the red chamber of a great novel where girls in silk lose their fortunes and their innocence among mirrored halls. Chinese moralists frowned on the lavish life; Confucius preferred plainness, and yet the poets could not stop writing about the shimmer of it—the candle-lit sleeve, the embroidered shoe, pleasure taken like a slow drug. Even the word's other meaning, to be worn away, whispers the same truth: luxury erodes, softly, the way water ruins silk. Perhaps that is the honest seduction of this character. It does not pretend to virtue. It confesses. It knows that everyone secretly longs to be ruined a little—by beauty, by appetite, by one perfect evening that costs everything. Wear it like something expensive you refuse to apologize for.