The Calligrapher — Zhào Jí 赵佶

Song emperor who created the slender, jewel-like 'Slender Gold' script.

Song calligrapher (1082–1135), master of regular script/cursive script — Emperor Huizong of Song, artist on the throne and inventor of the slender 'Slender Gold' script. Song dynasty

Cultural Story

Drawn at the present end of a count, the character 迄 means up to, as far as, the line set at the current limit of a reckoning. 迄今 is 'up to now,' the phrase a historian uses to close a span: the wall stood, 迄今, for six hundred years. 迄无 is 'still none,' the record that has run to its limit without producing the thing it sought. The word is time measured from the start to this very sentence.

Common words & phrases

• 迄今 up to now · so far · to this day
• 迄无 still none · yet without

Read the story behind the character

A report states that 迄今 no buyer has come forward, and a researcher notes the species has, 迄无, a confirmed sighting this decade. The word closes the ledger at today: how long the bridge has stood, how many signed, how far the search has run. 迄 draws the line at the present and says only this much has happened, and no more, up to the minute the page was printed and filed away.

Why this character belongs on skin

Everything has an edge it has reached and not passed. 迄 is that limit — the extent to which something has come, the so-far, the up-to-here and no further. It is the word for how far the road has run, how long the search has lasted, what has been accomplished and what has not. There is no drama in it; it is simply the honest measure of a thing's reach. We in the West confuse the limit with failure, when often it is only the truth of the moment. To carry 迄 is to mark where you are, not where you wish you were. It is the tattoo for the one who has stopped lying about the distance. Here is how far I have come. The rest is unwritten, and the character sits at the boundary like a gate left open.