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

臧 means good, right, worthy of praise — a word of verdicts. It lives on chiefly in 臧否, to approve or condemn, praise and blame in one breath. 诸葛亮's 出师表 warns the young emperor that in rewarding and punishing, 陟罚臧否, there must be no double standard in the palace or beyond it — a minister's famous lesson in even-handed judgment of men's merits.

Common words & phrases

• 臧否 praise and blame · approve or condemn
• 臧否人物 judge people's merits

Read the story behind the character

臧 is a character you meet only in quotations: your literature teacher writes 臧否人物 — judging people's merits and faults — on the board and asks who has the right to pass such verdicts. The debate grows heated, since everyone secretly loves to 臧否, to approve and condemn, and no one enjoys being on the receiving end.

Why this character belongs on skin

An old word, half-buried now, that simply meant good — good men, good horses, good counsel. 臧 appears in the earliest odes as verdict and praise: 臧否， to judge a thing worthy or not, was a critic's solemn duty, the weighing of a soul on honest scales. There was also a general, Zang, whose name became proverbial for men who rose from obscurity on sheer merit. The character holds the eye of a judge and the eye of a lover at once, because both ask the same question: is this thing genuinely good? Not fashionable, not convenient — good. The Stoics had a word, kalon, for the beautiful-and-right that needed no audience. When inked small on the inner arm or behind the ear, 臧 becomes a private credential, a standard you answer to on days no one is watching. Verdicts from crowds are cheap. Verdict from the mirror, from the man you swore to become — that is the only praise worth the skin it's written on.