The Calligrapher — Sū Shì 苏轼

Song literatus whose spontaneous running script shaped the literati ideal.

Song calligrapher (1037–1101), master of running script/regular script — Song poet-statesman and polymath whose expressive running script made personality, not rules, the point. Song dynasty

Cultural Story

The chi is the hornless dragon that crowns Chinese roofs. At the Forbidden City's Hall of Supreme Harmony a pair of chiwen clasp the two ends of the ridge, said to tame fire and guard the timber below. Han-dynasty pottery and jade already show the chilong coiled as a benign guardian, its body looping without the antlers of the true dragon. Never a threat, it is the quiet dragon of thresholds and ornaments.

Common words & phrases

• 螭龙 hornless dragon
• 螭吻 dragon roof ornament
• 螭虎 dragon-tiger ornament

Read the story behind the character

On a phone screen in a Beijing apartment a shopper scrolls past a jade chilong pendant listed beside a chiwen roof-tile magnet. At the hardware shop a builder compares a chihu ornament for a garden gate, amused that a so-called dragon-tiger fitting has no teeth. The chi keeps turning up as a name for things decorative and old, never frightening, just quietly coiled on the edge of a roof or a thumbnail.