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

Beneath Luoyang the Tang granary of Hanjia stored the realm's spare grain, its vaulted pits zhu the harvest against the lean year. The character zhu is that keeping, the zhu cang of a surplus laid by in cool dark. From the imperial pit the word passed to zhu bei, the reserve a state or house holds, and to zhu xù, the saving a careful hand puts by for the drought that comes.

Common words & phrases

• 贮藏 store · hoard
• 贮存 store · keep
• 贮备 reserve · stock
• 贮蓄 save · store

Read the story behind the character

A pantry zhu cun the rice against the storm, and a vault zhu bei the seed for spring. The cellar zhu xù the wine for the wedding, and a port zhu the cargo in transit. The character zhu still names the act of laying by, from the granary pit to the kitchen shelf.

Why this character belongs on skin

Winter is coming, the old ones said, and they meant it literally—store the grain, seal the jar, keep something against the hunger. 贮 is to store, to hoard, to lay away what the lean season will need. The shell at its root speaks of value kept, not spent; the cellar speaks of patience. But the truest 贮 is invisible, the love we bank against loss, the quiet reserves of self we draw on when the world goes thin. A person who cannot store is eaten by the present; a person who stores too much is buried by the past. To wear this character is to honor the keeper in you, the one who saves the good thing for the right hour. Let it sit on your skin like a sealed jar, a small mark that says you kept something, and kept it well, and the keeping was its own quiet kind of love.