The Chinese Character, an Interpretable Chinese Culture

“Chuang” (“床”) is a pictographic character that is in the form of a vertical bed in the oracle bone inscriptions, with the bed legs facing the left. So the original meaning of the character was a piece of furniture for sleeping on. In the small seal script, a “mu” (“木”, meaning “wood”) radical was added to the right side of the character, as most beds were made of wood. This form of the character changed little in the regular script. During the simplifying process of Chinese characters, the “mu” radical was retained, but the pictographic element on the left was removed, and a “guang”(“广”) radical related to houses was added to the character, which thus became what it is today.

Based on its original meaning, “chuang” had the extended meaning of “the stand on which something is placed”, as in the phrases like “ji chuang” (meaning “a machine tool”) and “qin chuang” (meaning “a zither table”). “Chuang” can also be used to mean things exactly shaped like a bed, such as “he chuang”, which means a riverbed.