Tonight, my wife and I watched Ang Lee’s exquisite Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. We had both seen it before, but we had both loved the beauty of the physics defying martial arts, so we decided to watch it again.

I had forgotten how frequently the movie drew the common parallel between calligraphy and swordplay, a theme explored in Jet Li’s Hero, another exciting, yet gorgeous film.

I was excited when, at the end, I recognized the characters in Ang Lee’s name. It is shown below.

The characters are 李安. Both are compound characters. The first, 李, is a combination of tree (木) and child (子). I was curious what these characters meant when combined, and it apparently means ‘plum’ on its own. The second character is a combination of roof (宀) and woman (女), creating a compound character meaning peace.

I was excited to recognize these symbols (though I didn’t know plum off-hand), and it told me I was making some progress after only such a short time!