Pictographs
「Draw the thing, follow its form」
Copy what the eye sees: sun, moon, water, tree — sketches of the world itself.
日月水木
Idea · Why We Built Ziyuan
Chinese characters are not a phonetic code — they are a complete model of thought. Literacy is not the goal; awakening is.
The Three-Layer Reading
Every root character is read in three layers — from picture, to logic, to meaning.
See the form
Return to the scene of invention — see what the ancients saw: a river, a tree, a setting sun.
Read the logic
Take the parts apart — why are they combined this way? Every component has its reason.
Grasp the wisdom
Let the form lead to philosophy — nature, feeling and conduct, written into the glyph.
Scale and Chains
The ancients never merely "named things" — they built a precise taxonomy. The water chain from drop to ocean grades by size; the wood chain from bud to stump follows a life cycle; the fire chain from spark to ash tracks intensity. Finding these chains, linking them, and setting them in motion — that is what this site is about.
The Six Scripts · Xu Shen’s Algorithm
Indicators
「See at a glance, ponder to grasp」
Add a mark to a picture: a stroke at the root makes 本 “root”; at the tip, 末 “tip”.
本末旦刃
Compound Ideas
「Pair the parts, let meaning meet」
Put two characters together for a new idea: a person by a tree is 休 “rest”; sun plus moon is 明 “bright”.
休明采从
Phono-Semantics
「One part means, one part sounds」
The workhorse of the script: a semantic sign plus a sound sign — rivers, trees, feelings, nearly nine-tenths of all characters.
江河松溪
Mutual Glosses
「One class, one meaning, glossing each other」
Characters of the same family that explain one another — 考 and 老, each “old” in the other’s light.
考老
Phonetic Loans
「No character yet? Borrow the sound」
Borrow a homophone for a new word: 莫 “sunset” was borrowed for “not”, so a new 暮 had to be coined.
莫然令长
Content & Method
- Glosses follow Shuowen Jiezi and the Erya, rendered in plain language rather than strict philology; quoted passages are marked as "Shuowen".
- Ancient glyph forms (oracle bone, small seal) are schematic reconstructions for understanding, not rubbings of artifacts.
- Character families are grouped by radical (34 so far); word chains are grouped by scene (17 so far). The English edition currently covers the founding six families — more translations are on the way.
- Found an error? Write to us — the study of character origins needs every generation of readers to proofread it.
Roadmap
- v0.1–v0.4：字族按部首归部，扩至二十二族 · 量级轴 · 组字动画 · 全站检索 · 词语链板块（按场景归部）。
- v0.5：二十五大字族（+乐、车、艹）· 词语链八场景 · 栏目锚点导航与计数。
- v0.6：二十八族（+石、风、酉）· 词语链十一场景（+衣饰、节令、书斋）。
- v0.7：三十一族（+骨、舌、页）· 词语链十四场景（+医药、博弈、市集）。
- v0.8（当前）：三十四族（+牙、耳、目）· 词语链十七场景（+驿路、茶馆、渔樵）。
- v0.9：英文版等多语言——让更多喜欢中华文化的人读懂「六书」。