James Kass wrote, > (What happens if someone discovers a 257th variant? Do they > get a prize? Or, would they be forever banished from polite > society?)
I was thinking about that. 256 variants of a single character may seem a tad excessive, but there is a common Chinese decoartive motif (frequently seen on trays and tea-pots and scarves and such like) comprising the ideograph shou4 (U+58FD, U+5900, U+5BFF) "longevity" written in 100 variant forms (called "bai3 shou4 tu2" in Chinese). See http://www.tydao.com/sxsu/shenhuo/minju/images/mj17.htm for an example. A quick google on "qian1 shou4 tu2" (the ideograph "shou4" written in a thousand different forms) came up with a piece of calligraphy by Wang Yunzhuang (b.1942) which comprises the ideograph shou4 written in no less than 1,256 unique variant forms ! Googling on "wan4 shou4 tu2" (the ideograph "shou4" written in 10,000 forms) also had a number of hits, but these refer to a compilation of calligraphy by forty artists that took 16 years to create (written on a scroll 160 metres in length), so these may not all be unique variants. There are also a number of other auspicious characters, such as fu2 (U+798F) "good fortune" that may be found written in a hundred variant forms as a decorative motif. All in all the new variant selectors may be kept quite busy if applied to the ideograph shou4 and its friends ! Andrew
