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

Etymology & Meaning · 字义溯源

2 · The Character: 陷 陷 (xiàn) is a trap drawn from life: the oracle-bone graph shows a person dropping into a pit. The Shuowen Jiezi (《说文解字》 𨸏部) glosses it '陷，高下也。一曰陊也' — the sheer drop from high to low, or simply, to fall. Duan Yucai's note ties it straight to the Yijing: '易曰：坎，陷也。谓阳陷阴中也' — 《易·说卦》 defines the water trigram itself as falling-in, one yang line swallowed between two yin. 《易·需·彖》 offers the antidote: '刚健而不陷', firm and vigorous, and therefore not trapped. Confucius uses it of a moral snare in 《论语·雍也》: '君子可逝也，不可陷也' — a noble man can be sent, but not entrapped. Every modern compound is dark: 陷阱 pit, 陷害 to frame, 诬陷 to slander, 沦陷 to fall to an enemy, 缺陷 a defect. Honest disclosure: this is not a positive free morpheme. Chinese naming dictionaries mark 陷 '寓意不佳，谨慎使用'. Do not wear it alone.

Cultural Story

陷 joins the hill radical 阝 with 臽. The Shuowen gives to sink, to fall into. Originally it described a pit or the collapse of ground; armies dug 陷阱 (traps) for enemies. Later it meant to frame someone or a defect that lets things fall through.

Common words & phrases

• 陷阱 trap
• 陷害 to frame
• 陷入 to fall into
• 缺陷 defect
• 凹陷 concave

Read the story behind the character

Hunters set a 陷阱 (trap), and rivals 陷害 (frame) each other in dramas. People 陷入 (fall into) debt, while a 缺陷 (defect) flaws a product. Cheeks 凹陷 (concave) with age. The character maps every kind of sinking.

Why this character belongs on skin

The ground gives way where it looked most solid, and the chariot wheel drops into the pit the enemy dug the night before. This character 陷 sets the earth radical beside a sound of descent, the sudden falling into — a trap, a marsh, a grief that opens under the foot. The warrior studies the ground before he advances; the Daoist warns that the lowest place is also the source. To fall is not the end; to be trapped is only to have mistaken the surface for the truth. To carry this word is to honor the times you went down and the strange clarity that came there. Let it rest where you have sunk deepest, a quiet record of the pit and the climbing out. The ink is the mark of one who has been buried and returned, proof that the earth that took you also taught you, and that nothing solid ever frightened you again.