Zhú 竹
The character for ‘bamboo’, and radical 118 of the 214 Kangxi radicals, under which kinds of bamboo and things made from it are filed, among them the writing brush.
Meaning
Unihan defines 竹 as ‘bamboo; flute’. In compounds it sits on top in a contracted form, as in 筆 ‘writing brush; write; stroke’ (simplified 笔) and 算 ‘count, calculate, figure; plan’. Mandarin reads it zhú; Japanese, take.
Origin and history
Wieger read the character as two stems of bamboo, “the twigs of which are not raised up, but drooping”. He noted its “Contracted form”, and called it the radical “of characters mostly referring to the many kinds or articles of bamboo”.
The brush under bamboo
筆, the writing brush, is filed under bamboo, radical 118 with six strokes more, and keeps the bamboo on top in its simplified form 笔. Bamboo is one of three plant radicals with pages here, with tree and grass.
Read next
- Next in Chinese radicalsYán 言The character for ‘words’ and ‘speech’, and radical 149 of the 214 Kangxi radicals, under which characters for speaking and language are filed.
- The same shape in Chinese mythology and symbolsDouble happiness (囍)囍, the character 喜 (xǐ, joy) written twice and joined into one sign, read shuangxi, “double happiness”. It is the sign of a Chinese wedding, pasted on the door and worked into the couple’s gifts and furnishings.
See also
Mù 木, Cǎo 艸, Rén 人, Nǚ 女, Zǐ 子, Kǒu 口.
Sources
- Unihan data for U+7AF9, Unicode Han Database (Unihan), Unicode Consortium, kRSUnicode; kTotalStrokes; kDefinition; kMandarin; kJapaneseKun
- Unihan data for U+7B46, Unicode Han Database (Unihan), Unicode Consortium, kRSUnicode; kDefinition; kSimplifiedVariant
- Unihan data for U+7B97, Unicode Han Database (Unihan), Unicode Consortium, kRSUnicode; kDefinition
- The Unicode Standard, chapter 18 (Han), The Unicode Standard, Version 16.0, Chapter 18: East Asia, Unicode Consortium, 18.1.8 Radical-Stroke Indices; 18.1.14 Kangxi Radicals and CJK Radicals Supplement
- Chinese Characters (Léon Wieger, 1927), Léon Wieger, Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification, translated by L. Davrout, second edition (1927), Catholic Mission Press, Hsien-hsien (Internet Archive full text), Lesson 77 B
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from letters and numbers or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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