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

To 掩 is to cover, the sleeve drawn over the face in grief, the gate 掩ed but not shut. The songs and the histories both know it, the gesture that hides a thing halfway, enough for modesty or for ambush. The character is the partial concealment, and the gate left ajar was the assassin's favorite kind of honesty.

Common words & phrases

• 掩护 to cover · to protect · cover
• 掩盖 to cover · to conceal · to mask
• 掩饰 to disguise · to conceal · to gloss over
• 掩埋 to bury · to cover with earth
• 掩体 bunker · shelter

Read the story behind the character

A screen 掩護s the sniper; a lie 掩蓋s the loss; the dead are 掩埋; a pit is a 掩體. The sleeve is a bunker now. The half-cover is the same, whether it hides a face, a deficit, or merely the body of someone the war was finished with, and the bunker is only the sleeve, widened to the size of a hill.

Why this character belongs on skin

Moonlight on a closed door, and the hand that draws the curtain without a sound, is the oldest courtesy we know. To cover is not always to hide from; sometimes it is to shield, to keep tender what the world would bruise. The Buddhists speak of veils we lift slowly, and of the mercy in not showing everything at once. This character carries the hand and the act of closing over, of keeping a confidence. There is a lover's discretion in it, and a warrior's: what you guard, you have declared precious. To wear it is to admit you hold something worth protecting, a private country beneath the public one. Let it rest where only you and one other might find it, a small door drawn shut against a loud age.