Weasel hair brushes (not Pure wolf hair brushes)

Among the many misnomers of Chinese calligraphy, 狼毫筆 is mostly mistranslated as wolf hair brushes. The correct translation is weasel hair brushes since the hairs of wolves are too stiff to be used for writing and are not used to make Chinese calligraphy or painting brushes. The term "Pure wolf hair brushes" is misleading since a Chinese brush made purely with wolf hair will be very difficult to contain the ink and to write. 狼毫筆 is made up of the hairs from weasels' tails. The mistranslation is due to that Chinese people do not distinguish the different species that look like a wolf. Literally: 黃鼠狼 (weasel) = yellow tail wolf, 野狼 = wild wolf, 狼狗 (wolf dog): a big dog that looks like a wolf.
Many English books have used the incorrect translations and some are using weasel hair brushes correctly.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Chinese
• calligraphy
• painting
• weasel
• hair
• brushes
• wolf

[lcy256]

I did not know it should be weasel for many years until someone told me. I though it was wolf.

[lannonsteward]

yes, there are so many mistranslation for this on youtube too.