The Chinese Character, an Interpretable Chinese Culture

“Yi” (衣, clothing) is a pictographic character. In the oracle bone inscriptions, the upper part of the character is like a collar of a dress and the lower part is like two sleeves. Judging from the shape of the character, we can see that its original meaning was an upper garment. The shape remains pretty much the same in the small seal script. And in the regular script, the image of a dress is gone.

Though the initial meaning of the character was an upper garment, it is later used as a general term for all clothes. “Yi” is also a radical, which is in the variant form of “衤”. Most characters with the radical are related to clothing or fabrics, such as “shan” (衫, an unlined upper garment), “chen” (衬, a lining), “qiu”(裘, a fur coat) etc.