The Calligrapher — Wáng Huīzhī 王徽之

Jin calligrapher of cursive script, Wang Xizhi's son famed for the New-Moon Letter (Xinyue tie).

Jin calligrapher (), master of cursive script — known for 王羲之之子. Jin dynasty

Cultural Story

桃 is the peach, the fruit of longevity and the 西遊記' immortals' 蟠桃 banquet, where a single peach grants a thousand years. The 詩經 sets a bride among 桃花, pink as her own wedding. The peachwood door-god drives demons away. The character is desire, luck, and the threshold between worlds.

Common words & phrases

• 桃子 peach
• 桃花 peach blossom
• 桃树 peach tree
• 桃红 peach pink
• 蟠桃 flat peach

Read the story behind the character

桃 is the summer fruit and the color: 桃子 the juice running down your chin, 桃花 the pink of a March orchard, 桃红 the shade of a bridesmaid's dress. 蟠桃 is the flat peach in a supermarket. The character is the edible and the auspicious, the pink that means both a blossom and a wedding invitation.

Why this character belongs on skin

The peach is the fruit the immortals eat, and in the old gardens its blossom is the blush of first love, brief and unbearable. 桃 is that tree — peach, the wood that wards off evil, the fruit that promises long life and a longer hunger. To hold a peach is to hold the contradiction of desire: it ripens, it falls, it is gone, and still we plant another. There is a Daoist ease in this, an acceptance of sweetness that will not stay. To tattoo 桃 is to keep spring on your skin through every winter you are handed. Let it rest where you are softest — the inside of an arm, a shoulder — a small pink mark of the bloom that means both love and the courage to be mortal beneath it, open as a flower, undefended.