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, 捂 is the palm pressed over a mouth or a lid, the hand that hides what should not be seen or said. The books said 蒙 or 覆; 捂 is the nursery and the conspiracy, the small clamp of the palm on a truth, and the child who covers his own eyes believes, briefly, that the room has vanished with him inside it.

Common words & phrases

• 捂住 to cover up · to hold over
• 捂盖子 to cover up (scandal)
• 捂嘴 to cover one's mouth

Read the story behind the character

You 捂住 a cough; a child 捂嘴 at the scare; an official 捂蓋子, covers the scandal like a pot. The palm on the mouth is a secret now. The clamp that hid a sneeze hides a disaster with the same flat of the hand, and the pot's lid is only the palm, scaled up to cover a province.

Why this character belongs on skin

Press a palm over a crying mouth and the sound does not stop; it only goes inward, where it learns to live as something else. This is the cover, the hand that seals a thing away — a secret, a wound, a forbidden joy. The Daoist warns that what you bury in the body rises in the dreams; the covered spring finds another channel. Yet sometimes the covering is mercy — a hand over a child's eyes so the terror passes, a silence kept to protect a name. To carry this character is to know the weight of what you have chosen not to say. The ink lies flat over the skin like a hand over a flame — not to smother it, but to keep its heat your own. Some fires are private.