乓

pāng
interjection #19,430

Meanings

  1. 1 bang! (onomatopoeia)
  2. 2 the -pong in ping-pong (乒乓)

Examples

HSK 4
Tāmen zài dǎ pīngpāngqiú.
They are playing table tennis.
HSK 7-9
Pīng pīng pāng pāng, lóushàng zài bān jiājù.
Bang bang crash crash - the upstairs neighbors are moving furniture.

Tips

memory
乓 is almost exclusively seen paired with 乒 in 乒乓 (ping-pong). Together they mimic the alternating sounds of a table tennis rally. China's national sport connection makes this one memorable.

Components

semantic
丘 qiū
hill; mound
Top five strokes - the character 丘 hill. 乓 is one half of the matched pair 乒乓 'ping-pong': both characters are 兵 (soldier) with one diagonal stroke dropped, 乒 missing the right-falling and 乓 missing the left-falling. Indexed under Kangxi #4 丿 by tradition, despite the missing piě being precisely what defines 乓's silhouette.
ideograph
丶 zhǔ
dot stroke
Final dot on the right - the surviving fragment of 兵's lower-right falling stroke. Pedagogically it functions as a position marker showing this is the 'right-side' twin in the 乒乓 pair (乒 mirrors it with the dot on the left). Pure graphic indicator, no independent meaning.

Filed under radical 丿 (piě, #4) by convention. 丿 is not a separate component in 乓, so no strokes are highlighted.

Stroke Order

乓 pāng