shǔ / zhǔ
verb HSK 3 #5,845

Meanings

  1. 1 to belong to; to be classified as
  2. 2 to be born in the year of (Chinese zodiac)
  3. 3 genus; category; class (taxonomy)
  4. 4 family members; dependents

Examples

Zhège bùmén shǔyú gōngsī zǒngbù.
This department belongs to the company headquarters.
Nǐ shǔ shénme?
What's your Chinese zodiac sign?
Wǒ shǔlóng.
I was born in the Year of the Dragon.

Tips

culture
+ zodiac animal is how Chinese people state their zodiac year: 属鼠 (rat — note same pinyin!), 属牛 (ox), 属虎 (tiger), etc. 你属什么的? is one of the most common personal questions in China — it reveals your approximate age through the 12-year zodiac cycle without forcing you to give your birth date.
mistakes
has a second reading in literary compounds: 属意 (to set one's heart on), 属望 (to pin hopes on). All everyday senses (belong to, zodiac, genus, dependents) stay shǔ. You'll rarely meet zhǔ outside formal writing.

Components

radical
shī
corpse; body; flag (radical)
Top-left wrapper and indexing radical. Originally a pictograph of a seated body, here used as a covering — the parent character is filed under even though semantically 'belonging' has little to do with the body. Standard radical placement: caps the top-left corner and extends down-left over what's underneath.
phonetic
Yu (legendary emperor); reptile shape
Inside is a 1956 simplification of the much busier -element (insect + eye) found in traditional . The phonetic role is loose — the original element carried shǔ, and keeps that reading despite the substitution. Today here is best treated as an opaque inner cluster rather than a transparent sound clue.

Stroke Order

shǔ