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

A spoken character, 挨 is the body pressed against the next one, or against its luck. The books said 近 or 遭; 挨 is the cramped bench and the deserved blow, the tongue's word for being close to something you would rather not be near, and the bench in the waiting room is the first school of the character everyone attends.

Common words & phrases

• 挨近 get close · approach
• 挨打 get beaten
• 挨饿 go hungry · suffer famine
• 挨着 next to · close to
• 挨骂 get scolded

Read the story behind the character

You 挨近 the fire; a child 挨打; a village 挨餓 in the drought; a scolded boy 挨罵. The bench is a queue and a famine now. The press against the next thing — warmth, a hand, hunger — is the same small endurance the word always named, and the queue is only the bench, stretched out the door and down the street.

Why this character belongs on skin

There is a way a child leans, full weight, into the only solid thing he trusts. Āi is that closeness — shoulder to shoulder in the queue of the living, or the pressed flank of two soldiers in a trench who have stopped pretending they are separate. It is also the blow endured: to āi a beating is to take it against the body and remain. The character joins nearness and suffering without apology, as if the ancients knew love and pain share one skin. Confucius taught that to stand close is to be responsible. Ink it where another body has leaned, a rib perhaps, a quiet record of the nearness you chose and the hardness you absorbed. Let it mean you have been close enough to be hurt, and stayed.