Tag: Chinese Characters

One way of remembering characters is to make up "stories" which would make "sense" to yourself. For instance, in  休   xiū  to rest, the radical on the left,  亻 means "a person", and the part on the right,  木 , means wood or tree, so the made up "story" could be "a person is leaning against a tree to have a  rest." Let’s look at another example;  队   duì  a queue. The radical on the left,  阝 means plenty and the part on the right,  人   means people, so one could say: "Plenty of people make a  queue." Sometimes the radical doesn’t have enough to allow a story to be made up then one should use one’s imagination. For instance, in  办   bàn  to deal with  the middle part of the character  力   means strength, and the two dots,  、   look like sweat, so one could say: "Nowadays one needs strength and sweat to  deal with  business."