The ancient Chinese incorporated their observations and awareness of nature into the shapes of Chinese characters.

Learn Chinese: 日(“ri”, the sun)

The archaic character for “日” resembles the shape of the sun. the small dot in the middle indicates that the sun is a luminous body—⊙. In ancient China, there was a story called “Houyi shoots the Suns”. According to legend, there were once 10 suns in the sky. The earth was so hot that people were unable to live a normal life.

A hero named Houyi shot down nine of the ten suns. With only one sun left in the sky, people were finally able to live a normal life. The rising sun represents the beginning of a new day, while the falling sun represents that the day has come to end. Therefore, aside from denoting the sun, the character “日” can also mean “day” or “daytime”, such as “日日夜夜” (riri yeye: “night and day”). Later, the character also came to be used to express the time period of a single day, as in the words “今日” (jinri: “today”) and “明日” (mingri: “tomorrow”).

It can also serve as a component in the formation of other Chinese characters. Most of the characters formed with “日” are related to the sun. For example, the character “旦”, just add a horizontal line under “日”. The character depicts the sun as it is just rising from the ground, thus conveying the meaning of “dawn” or “daybreak”.