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

Jasmine came north out of Persia and Southeast Asia and by Song times perfumed the gardens of the warm south, where poets ranked its clean, cool fragrance above the peony's swagger. Folk singers of Jiangsu made it the flower every young man wants to pick but dares not, until the melody traveled the world on ships and stages.

Common words & phrases

• 茉莉 jasmine

Read the story behind the character

Every bubble-tea menu lists jasmine green tea as its base, a humidity-proof houseplant thrives on a Guangzhou balcony, the folk song Jasmine Flower opens a solemn international ceremony as it has opened so many, and a perfume brand releases a jasmine flanker every June. A grandmother plucks the flowers to float in her tea bowl.

Why this character belongs on skin

It exists only in company—mò never stands alone, only as mòlì, jasmine, the small white flower that perfumes the night and asks for nothing back. To name it is to name the quiet kind of beauty: modest, nocturnal, the scent that enters a room before the eye finds the source. Women tucked it behind the ear; poets wrote it into farewells. The character is grass and a far-off sound, a flower that travels. There is a lesson in its dependence—that some loveliness only lives in pairing, in the embrace of another word, another hand. Wear it where you keep what is soft—the wrist, the nape—a small white mark for the part of you that blooms in darkness and trusts the air to carry it. You are someone's jasmine.