Browse Characters — Learn Chinese Through Stories

Every character has an origin. Discover the pictographs, myths, and history behind each Chinese character — with pinyin, stroke order, HSK level, and audio pronunciation.

岜

bā

This 7-stroke 'stony hill' character is a linguist

岒

qián

This character doesn’t live in dictionaries or co

岑

cén

This ‘small hill’ character hides a double mount

岐

qí

This 'mountain fork' character looks like a simple

岍

qiān

This mountain-name character looks like 'dry mount

岌

jí

Its two tiny dots above 山 aren’t decoration — t

岊

jié

This rare, poetic character looks like a mountain

屾

shēn

A six-stroke pictograph born to show *exactly two*

屼

wù

This character is a fossilized poem: 山 + 兀 = a m

屺

qǐ

This six-stroke 'barren hill' appears in ancient p

屹

yì

Though it looks like 'mountain + beg', 屹 isn’t a

屴

lì

This character isn’t just ‘high mountain’ — it

屯

tún

Born as a pictograph of a sprout breaking through

屮

chè

This 3-stroke character isn’t a word you’ll spea

屪

liáo

This 'zero-stroke' myth is false — it has 8 strok

屩

juē

This 'zero-stroke' character (a playful lie—it ha

屦

jù

This 'sandals' character hides a kneeling person (

屧

xiè

This character’s elegant seal-script origin — wo

屣

xǐ

This 'slipper' character hides a profound cultural

屠

tú

Born as a bronze-age pictograph of a cleaver strik

屝

fèi

Born from a bronze-age image of a person sweeping

屙

ē

This 10-stroke character fuses 'corpse' and 'certa

屘

mǎn

A rare, tender kinship term born in southern diale

屖

xī

This 'character' has zero strokes and zero existen

屐

jī

This 10-stroke character hides a poetic engineerin

屎

shǐ

This character began as a Bronze Age doodle of a s

屌

diǎo

This 'corpse' radical character hides no corpse —

屇

tián

This 'cave' character vanished from daily use over