The Calligrapher — Ōuyáng Xún 欧阳询

Tang regular-script master whose 'Ouyang style' is a basic learning model.

Tang calligrapher (557–641), master of regular script/running script — Tang codifier of regular script; crisp, architectural strokes you could measure with a ruler. Tang dynasty

Cultural Story

凿 is the bore that makes a hole. The boy Kuang Heng, too poor for lamp oil, 凿壁偷光, cut a hole through the wall to borrow his neighbour's light and read by it; his story opens a thousand study manuals. Well-diggers 凿井, masons 开凿 channels. The character is work done by pressure turning against stone or earth until it gives way.

Common words & phrases

• 凿子 chisel
• 开凿 cut · dig · excavate · bore
• 穿凿 bore through · strain interpretation
• 凿孔 bore a hole · punch hole
• 凿井 sink a well · dig a well

Read the story behind the character

On the bench a carpenter's 凿子 squares a mortise for a chair leg. Engineers 开凿 a tunnel through the ridge to shorten the rail line. In a debate a speaker 穿凿, straining a text to mean what it never said. The word names the chisel, the bore, and the forcing of an argument past its natural sense.

Why this character belongs on skin

Nothing great in stone was asked politely in. 凿 is the chisel and the act of chiseling—striking, cutting, driving a channel through hard material until the hidden shape consents to exist. Michelangelo swore the statue already lived inside the marble and he was only freeing it; every sculptor since has known the truth in that. But the character also carries a warning: 凿空, to bore through, gave the name to the old road opened across the Western deserts—boldness rewarded. And the idiom 穿凿 mocks those who force meanings where none live, chatter drilled too hard. So this is a character about applied force with a purpose: the discipline to strike the same place, again and again, when one blow changes nothing. Ninety-nine taps; the hundredth splits the rock. Ink it over scar or knuckle. Let it ask: what are you still chiseling toward, and will you not stop?