The Calligrapher — Wáng Xīzhī 王羲之

The 'Sage of Calligraphy'; his running script has set the standard for 1,700 years.

Eastern Jin calligrapher (303–361), master of running script/cursive script/regular script — the Sage of Calligraphy; his Orchid Pavilion Preface is the most celebrated work in the tradition, and nearly every later master traces lineage to his hand. Eastern Jin dynasty

Cultural Story

Confucius praised Yan Hui for '克己复礼' — mastering the self to restore the rites. The character once showed a man kneeling under a roof, subdued. In the Zuozhuan, generals 攻克 walled towns; later the word meant solving a hard problem. A kitchen scale in old texts weighed in 克, a unit borrowed from the West only in the last century.

Common words & phrases

• 克服 overcome · conquer · surmount
• 克制 restrain · control · repress
• 攻克 capture · solve · take by storm
• 千克 kilogram · kilo
• 坦克 tank · armored vehicle
• 巧克力 chocolate · cocoa

Read the story behind the character

A runner 克服 a pulled muscle to finish the race. The cook 克制 the urge to oversalt. Chemists 攻克 a stubborn compound; shoppers buy 巧克力 by the bar and read 千克 on the label. A child's toy 坦克 sits on the shelf, its treads painted green, far from any real battlefield.