Learning Chinese

Exploring the Chinese character 瓦, meaning 'tile.'

Exploring Chinese Characters: Explaining 瓦

Jul 9, 2009, 3:00 pm

Exploring the Chinese character 瓦, meaning 'tile.'

The preface to a series exploring the essence of Chinese characters.

Exploring Chinese Characters, A Preface

Apr 26, 2009, 12:00 am

The preface to a series exploring the essence of Chinese characters.

Exploring Chinese Characters Article 1: Introducing 一 (one)

Apr 12, 2009, 11:00 pm

In this new series of articles exploring Chinese characters, 一 (yī) is the first character we will introduce.

Mysterious Chinese Characters (18): Fu

Mar 8, 2009, 11:00 am

夫 (Fu) in Chinese is especially used with the connected characters 丈夫 (zhangfu), husband, spouse, and consists of the two ideograms 大 (da) and 一 (yi). 大 means big, because in contrast to a woman, a man was always bigger in the imagination of the Chinese people.

Mysterious Chinese Characters (17): Ru

Feb 19, 2009, 9:00 am

儒 (rú) is part of the character for “Confucianism”, and is also used for “Confucian scholar”. The meaning becomes apparent by looking at its composition.

Mysterious Chinese Characters (16): Ren

Feb 13, 2009, 5:00 am

The Chinese character 'ren', consists of two components, and represents man's correct ethical conduct in the world.

Mysterious Chinese Characters (15): Dao

Jan 27, 2009, 7:00 am

The character Dao shows that the complexity of Chinese characters does not derive only from the almost inscrutable number of them, but also because of the many different meanings each character conceals.