| |
|
Pinyin | xī (first tone) |
| English | west | |
| Rather like 'hsee' | ||
As with several of the basic 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 however the form has been 'borrowed' with 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 |