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

植 is to set a 木 upright in the ground — to plant — and the gentleman who 植德 plants virtue as a sapling. The character is the deliberate setting-down, the act of making something stand that will grow. It is the verb of cultivation, of trees and of reputations that take a season to root.

Common words & phrases

• 植物 plant · vegetation · flora
• 种植 plant · cultivate · grow
• 植树 plant trees · afforest
• 移植 transplant · graft · transfer
• 扶植 foster · nurture · support
• 栽植 plant · set out · transplant

Read the story behind the character

植 is the word of putting in: 植物 the kingdom a textbook divides, 植树 the Arbor Day the school forces, 种植 the farmer's spring, 移植 the surgeon's graft and the football club's transfer. 扶植 is the patron who backs a protégé. The character is the act of setting things to grow in soil or in a career.

Why this character belongs on skin

The farmer presses the seedling into the black earth and steps back, and the year begins its slow arithmetic of growth. 植 is to plant, to establish, the hand setting the thing upright in the soil — the founding of a tree, a law, a family's name. The Confucian speaks of the planting of virtue, the good deed set in the ground of a life so that others may harvest it generations on. There is a patient confidence in this character, the faith that what is set rightly will rise. To wear 植 is to claim the long game, the work that outlives the worker. Ink it along the leg or the side, where roots would run, a quiet record of what you have set in the world — a child, a principle, a garden. You will not see the full tree. That is not the point. The planting is the devotion.