米mǐ(rice)

Cooking requires the use of fire, but it doesn’t mean that once people had fire, they could cook. In China, there is a saying, “qiǎo fù nán wéi wú mǐ zhī chuī”. In other words, without rice, even the wisest wife could not cook a meal.

For the Chinese people, the rice is the most important of all staple foods. The oracle script character for “米” looks like scattered grains of rice. The horizontal stroke in the middle depicts the partition of a shelf used for storing rice. China was the 1st country to grow paddy rice. There are many kinds of rice, including “大米dàmǐ(rice)”; “小米xiáo mǐ(millet)”, “黑米hēi mǐ(biack rice)”, “紫米zǐ mǐ(purple rice)”. Chinese characters with the component “米” are all related to food include “粮lián?(grain)”, “糕?āo (cake)”, “粥zhōu (congee)”.