The Calligrapher — Zhào Mèngfǔ 赵孟頫

Yuan master whose elegant regular and running script revived classical tradition.

Yuan calligrapher (1254–1322), master of regular script/running script/cursive script — Yuan reviver of classical elegance who could write any script beautifully and did. Yuan dynasty

Cultural Story

The form showed a bird on water, 凫, the wild duck that rides the current. The Odes send the hunter for '弋凫与雁', to net the duck and the goose. A man who could 凫水 swam the river to carry word. The word was the bird and the stroke, the same easy float.

Common words & phrases

• 凫水 to swim
• 野凫 wild duck
• 凫茈 water chestnut

Read the story behind the character

A 野凫 rides the pond at the park; the boy learns to 凫水 at the pool. The market sells 凫茈, water chestnut, by the bunch. The word fits a bird and a stroke — both at home on the surface, neither needing the solid ground the rest of us stand on.

Why this character belongs on skin

凫 is the wild duck riding winter water without complaint—floating, drifting, entirely at home in a cold that would kill you in an hour. The bird radical rides above a few spare strokes like feathers settled on a current. Zhuangzi would approve of this bird without reservation: the duck's legs are short by nature, he said, and heaven did not err in making them so; to stretch them would be cruelty. The whole teaching is there—know your own length, and float on it. The duck neither fights the river nor fears it; it does not envy the heron's height or the carp's depth. Serenity, it turns out, is not stillness at all. It is movement in perfect agreement with the water, effort expended at exactly the rate the current allows. You have spent years paddling against your own nature. Let this small master of ease be inked near a pulse, and learn the drift.