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

吗 is a modern question particle with no role in the classical canon, where questions were formed without it. Its phonetic half 馬 (horse) supplies the sound while the mouth radical 口 marks speech. The character crystallized as northern vernacular grammar replaced literary Chinese in the late imperial and Republican eras; older texts used 乎, 耶, or 哉 at sentence end to mark inquiry. So its root is not ancient myth but the living sound of everyday questioning, the small hook that turns a statement into a question in spoken Mandarin.

Common words & phrases

• 吗啡 morphine
• 干吗 what for · why

Read the story behind the character

吗 appears in almost every spoken Chinese question: a friend texts 干吗 (what for, why) are you late, and you answer with a trailing 吗. At the hospital a doctor mentions 吗啡 (morphine) to ease a patient's pain, and the word still carries that same mouth radical, a sound shaped by the lips. Teenagers add 吗 to tease—"你傻吗?"—while grandparents use it gently to check on you. It is the tiny syllable of curiosity threading markets, classrooms, and late-night chats.