The Chinese Character, an Interpretable Chinese Culture

“Zhou” (州) is an ideographic character. In the oracle bone inscriptions, it is written as three curves, with the curve in the middle forming a circle and two others on both sides shaped like a river. The small circle in the middle is like a piece of land surrounded by water, which makes the original meaning of the character clear – islet, land in water. In the small seal script, the character looks like two “chuan” (川, meaning “a river or stream”) characters overlapped with each other, highlighting the meaning of “land in water”.

Later, the character took on a new meaning - an administrative division, and it has been added with a water radical to form a homophone, “zhou” (洲), referring to “land in water”. Today, “zhou” (州) is mainly used as part of place names , as in “Hangzhou”, “Yangzhou”, “Suzhou” and so on.