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

Qu Yuan's 'Li Sao' cries that 'the many women envy my moth-eyebrows,' 众女嫉余之蛾眉兮, turning petty jealousy into political slander. From this came 嫉妒, while 嫉恶如仇 praised those who hate evil outright. The graph sets woman and disease side by side — envy figured as a sickness of the heart.

Common words & phrases

• 嫉妒 to envy · to be jealous · jealousy
• 嫉恨 to envy and hate · to resent
• 嫉惡 to hate evil

Read the story behind the character

Scrolling feeds breed quiet 嫉妒 of strangers' holidays, and 嫉恶 fuels comment sections demanding justice for whistleblowers. HR manuals warn that 嫉妒 poisons teams, while true-crime docuseries frame a detective's 嫉恶 as heroism. The word now diagnoses both the green-eyed scroll and the righteous rage.

Why this character belongs on skin

The old texts are unsparing about envy: it burns the vessel that holds it. 嫉 is the character for that green fire, a woman radical beside illness—jealousy imagined as sickness of the heart. But confession has its own glamour. To ink 嫉 is not to worship the sin; it is to wear the diagnosis like a recovered addict wears a date. You know this fever from the inside—the ache at another's luck, the acid of wanting. Naming it on your skin is the cure's first step, or a warning to yourself, permanently. The Buddhists call envy one of the three poisons. Tattoos, too, can be antidotes. The Greeks drew the same line—the evil eye, the gaze that wants—and prescribed the same cure: gratitude counted out loud, daily, like coins returned to a lender. Let this one remind you what you refuse to become again.