The Chinese Character, an Interpretable Chinese Culture
- 犬 (dog)
"Quan" (犬) is a pictographic character. If the character in the oracle bone inscriptions is turned 90 degrees anticlockwise, it looks exactly like a dog, with a wide-open mouth in the front and a curved tail at back. So the original meaning of the character was a dog. The form of the character is somewhat changed in the small seal script, with exaggerated mouth and tail of a dog. However, the...
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走 (Walk)
In the oracle bone inscriptions, the character “zou” (走) is shaped like a person shaking his two arms while fast walking or running. In the bronze inscriptions, the character is made up of two parts, with the upper part being a running person swinging both arms and the lower part a “zhi” (止)...
The Culture Implied in Chinese Characters
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Learning the Ways Handan People Walk
This is a Chinese idiom from the classical work Zhuangzi. It is said that there was a man who found...
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Guan Yu Suffering Defeat while Passing through Maicheng
In the 24th year of the Jian'an Period in the Han Dynasty, Guan Yu, a general of the Shu Kingdom was...
List of the Chinese Characters
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“草(Cao, grass)” is a pictographic character in oracle bone inscriptions. It vividly resembles two blades of grass thrusting...
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In oracle bone script, the character depicts the scene when the sun is rising from the mountain. Nowadays, it expresses the rising...
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The character looks like a full bow in the oracle bone inscription. And in Shuowen Jiezi (Origin of Chinese Characters), it looks...
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"Dao" (刀) is a pictographic character that looks like a long knife in the oracle bone inscriptions. It is thus clear that there...
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In the oracle bone inscriptions, the character niu (牛) is like a simple sketch of an ox head, highlighting its horns and ears....
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“Chuang” (“窗”) was originally a pictographic character written like this ... in ancient Chinese books. The form is pretty...
