The Most Interesting Chinese Character: 囍

 

The "Double Joy" character, 囍 (xǐ), is one of the most widely recognized and beloved characters among Chinese people, including overseas Chinese communities. Along with 福 (fú — blessing/fortune) and 龙 (lóng — dragon), it is one of the three most frequently used characters in folk culture.

The character 囍 is composed of two 喜 (xǐ) characters placed side-by-side. Let us first look at the historical evolution of the single character 喜.

(From left to right: Oracle Bone Script, Bronze Script, Small Seal Script, and Clerical Script)

The top portion of the Oracle Bone Script is 壴 (pinyin: zhù), 

which means "drum." Someone might ask: Why is a horizontal stroke missing from the middle of the character 壴here? This single horizontal line serves as an ideographic indicator (zhǐshì), representing the drumhead being struck—in other words, a drum currently being played. The absence of this stroke signifies a drum at rest. While 壴 was discarded during the simplification of Chinese characters, it still exists within traditional characters today.

The bottom portion is the character 口 (kǒu — mouth). In ancient times, entertainment and performances already existed; when the drumbeats resounded, the show would begin, and the audience would laugh so hard their mouths couldn't close. Therefore, beating the drum + mouth = joy (喜).

Because the character 喜 can be found in Oracle Bone Script, we know it appeared more than 3,500 years ago. However, the Double Joy character (囍) appeared much later. Legend has it that it was created by Wang Anshi, a famous statesman of the Northern Song Dynasty, though this remains a folk legend with no definitive historical proof.

The Double Joy character is deeply loved by ordinary people because it implicitly conveys "double happiness" or "joy upon joy." It is most commonly used in wedding ceremonies and for decorating bridal chambers. The vast majority of people get married—some even multiple times—so almost everyone ends up using the Double Joy character at some point. Even for the very few who remain unmarried for life, their family members, relatives, and friends get married, requiring them to attend weddings. Thus, no one truly escapes the 囍 character.

Yet, what is astonishing is that over its nearly thousand-year history, this widely adored and universally used character has never been included in formal, standardized dictionaries. For instance, Shuowen Jiezi, the Xinhua Dictionary, the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary, and even the online database Han Dian have completely omitted the character 囍. Strictly speaking, this implies that the character has never been officially recognized by authorities, making it a "non-standard character." Another way to phrase "non-standard character" is a "miswritten character" or "typo" (cuòbiézì). Remarkably, no other "typo" in history has been widely used for a thousand years without ever facing a single shred of criticism.

Shuowen Jiezi dates back to the Han Dynasty. If the story of Wang Anshi creating the character is true, 囍 appeared more than nine hundred years after Shuowen Jiezi was compiled, making its omission there entirely understandable. However, its exclusion from modern references like the Xinhua Dictionary, the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary, and Han Dian is highly surprising, especially since no official explanation has ever been provided.

When previously answering the question "Why hasn't the character 囍 been included in standard dictionaries?", Gemini stated:

"The character '囍' did not enter standard dictionaries because, throughout its long history, it chose a path toward becoming an 'artistic and folkloric totem' rather than a 'daily linguistic tool.'"

This explanation seems to make sense on the surface, but it isn't entirely convincing. For example, don't the characters 龙(dragon) and 福 (blessing) also represent "artistic and folkloric totems"? Yet, dictionaries have no problem including them. Furthermore, the shift of the character 囍 toward becoming an "artistic and folkloric totem" was not its choice, but rather the choice of the people.

Written on May 17, 2026

Why Is Chinese Grammar So Simple (2)?

Over two years ago, I wrote an article titled "Why is Chinese Grammar So Simple?" in which I pointed out that Chinese lacks singular/plural variations, tense changes, and cases (nominative vs. accusative), among other complexities.

Where English uses am, is, are, was, were, have/has been, will be, etc., to express different forms of "be," Chinese solves it with just one character: 是 (shì).

Where English uses do, did, does, done, will/would do, is/was/have been done, etc., to express different forms of "do," Chinese gets it done with just one character: 做 (zuò).

Readers who are interested but haven't seen that article can click the link below to read it:

https://leweishang.blogspot.com/2024/01/why-is-chinese-grammar-so-simple.html

That previous article did not discuss why Chinese invented such a simple grammatical structure. Was it because ancient Chinese people were exceptionally clever, or were they simply forced by necessity? Today, I will discuss this intriguing question.

English, and almost all phonetic (alphabetic) scripts, possess very complex and, admittedly, more rigorous linguistic systems. Beyond complex verbs, their nouns and pronouns are also intricate. Combined with complex grammar, this makes learning English feel incredibly difficult, especially for Chinese speakers. However, English and other phonetic scripts have one major advantage: they are spelled with letters, which is extremely convenient. They also benefit from the close link between spelling and pronunciation.

The forms mentioned above—am, is, are, was, were, have/has been, will/would be—are all spelled out, which is easy to achieve physically. The difficulty lies only in knowing when to use which form.

In contrast, Chinese characters are pictographs. They cannot be "spelled"; they can only be newly created. If the character "是" represented "am," then to represent "is," we would have to invent an entirely new character—let’s call it "是1." We would then need "是2" for "are," "是3" for "was," "是4" for "were," and so on.

Chinese characters are inherently difficult to invent. This difficulty led to methods like derivative cognates (转注) and phonetic loan characters (假借) to solve the problem of character shortages by using one character for multiple meanings. If you tried to make a word like "是" highly granular—requiring a different character for every person and every tense—it would be an "impossible mission" for a logographic system.

Consequently, Chinese verbs evolved to be completely devoid of tense and person variations: I am, you are, he is, we are, you (pl.) are, they are; was yesterday, is today, will be tomorrow, was in the past, will be in the future, is forever... In Chinese, all of these remain simply "是."

While it may lack the formal rigor of English, as long as adverbs/adjuncts (now, yesterday, future, etc.) are added, no misunderstanding occurs. These adverbs have to be created anyway, and once they exist, they can be used anywhere. There is no need to memorize various verb forms or worry about which specific morphology to apply, as one must in English.

Because spelling is easy in English, the language "indulges" itself, allowing verbs, nouns, and pronouns to become incredibly complex. Since it’s just a matter of arranging a few letters, creating a new word is easy. One can also simply add suffixes like -ing, -ed, -or, -er, -tion, etc. How can you add a suffix to a Chinese character? You can't. You would have to create a whole new character.

In short: The extreme difficulty of creating characters forced Chinese into an ultra-simple grammar, using polysemy (one word, many meanings) to solve the character shortage. Conversely, the ease of spelling in English allowed for a complex grammar and a "one meaning, many words" system (e.g., one concept of "be" requiring many different words to express it).

Looking back today, minimalist Chinese grammar is not only helpful for those learning the language but has become a distinct advantage in the AI era: AI running on Chinese characters is 40% faster than AI running on English.

The professional term for this is that "Chinese characters have a higher information density than English." My understanding is simpler: one "是" is equivalent to a whole heap of different English "be"s; one "做" is equivalent to a pile of different "do"s. While this difference isn't obvious in a single character, the gap becomes massive when scaled across the enormous volume of AI operations.

Written on May 1, 2026.