Profound
Chinese Calligraphy Scroll

Profound

This wall scroll is discounted because it's a little wavy. This just means it's not perfectly flat, but over time, this may go away on its own.

Close up view of the calligraphy artwork mounted to this silk brocade wall scroll

These four characters together translate in English to a strong form of "profound".

But there is much more to the story...

The deep meaning behind this phrase comes from a man named Wan Xizhi who lived in the third century.

He was a great writer and calligrapher whose writing style influenced generations of other writers and calligraphers.

He once wrote words on a piece of wood to be taken to an engraver.
When the engraver began to carve the characters into the wood, he found that Wang Xizhi's writing had penetrated the wood about 3/8 of an inch.

Thus people believed that his words were so powerful, and so profound this it caused the ink from his brush to penetrate the wood deeply.

The phrase literally means "penetrated wood three fen" (fen is an ancient Chinese measurement a little over to 1/8 of an inch or almost 4mm).