Basic Language | Xi

	Pinyin	xī (first tone)
	English	west
	Rather like 'hsee'

As with some other common characters the perhaps fanciful derivation is a bird sitting on a nest, representing the fact that when the sun sets in the West, birds go back to roost on their nests. With millennia of simplification this has become a stroke representing the bird with only its two legs on the nest clearly denoted. More likely though the character has been 'borrowed' from another character by a long-lost association.

A number of provinces have West as part of their names: Xizang (better known as Tibet), Shanxi (literally mountain West), Shaanxi, Jiangxi (literally river West) and Guangxi (literally vast West).

wàng	xī	zǒu

towards	west	walk