The Calligrapher — Yán Zhēnqīng 颜真卿

Tang master of robust regular script; co-creator of the enduring 'Yan style'.

Tang calligrapher (709–784), master of regular script/running script — the Tang moral paragon whose upright, muscular regular script became the model of Chinese integrity in writing. Tang dynasty

Cultural Story

亞 is the traditional shape of 亚, the roof with cross-aisles, the second hall, the subordinate place. In the 說文 it is the second. The classics used it for rank and ritual space before it named a continent. This form is kept in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and in classical and calligraphic contexts; the mainland simplifies it to 亚. The meaning, beside, inferior to, next, is unchanged.

Common words & phrases

• 亞洲 Asia
• 亞軍 runner-up · second place
• 亞熱帶 subtropical
• 亞麻 linen · flax

Read the story behind the character

亞洲 is Asia in traditional-script texts; 亞軍 the silver medal; 亞熱帶 the subtropical belt; 亞麻 linen and flax, the cloth and the oil. The character survives wherever traditional Chinese is printed, textbooks in Taipei, temple plaques, old editions. It carries both the old second and the borrowed continent, the subordinate hall now also a subcontinent, written with the roof and its cross-passages intact.