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

A spoken character, 摸 is the groping hand in the dark, the blind man 摸ing the wall for the door. The books said 捫 or 觸; 摸 is the plainer feel, the one the night and the unknown forced the tongue to invent, and the wall the blind man found was the only honest map the dark ever offered, since the door at the end of it kept moving.

Common words & phrases

• 触摸 touch
• 摸索 grope · fumble
• 摸底 sound out · find out
• 抚摸 stroke · caress
• 摸黑 in the dark

Read the story behind the character

You 觸摸 the screen; a detective 摸索s the truth; a helper 摸底, sounds out the mood; a thief moves 摸黑. The wall is a phone now. The groping hand is the same, whether it finds a door, a fact, or merely the shape of a room a person is too proud to have lit, and the phone is only the wall, glowing now and still hiding the door behind it.

Why this character belongs on skin

Before the eye trusted anything, the hand did. 摸 is pure touch — to feel along a wall in the dark, to run fingers over a scar to learn its history, to palm a lover's shoulder blade without looking. The hand radical sits at the left, doing what hands do. The Chinese use it for groping toward truth as much as for skin: 摸索, to feel one's way, is how they describe all discovery, science and love and grief alike. There is no more honest sense. Sight can be fooled; a mirror can lie; but the hand in the dark learns the real topography — the warmth, the tremor, the pulse under the wrist. The Christians say Thomas needed to touch the wounds; the Buddhists say the blind men touched the elephant and each told a piece of truth. 摸 forgives the groping. It knows that is how everything worth finding gets found. Ink for the fingertips it will sit beside — and everything they have ever reached for.