边 (biān): side

Meanings

1 side
2 edge; margin
3 border; frontier
4 boundary

Characters

边

biān

side; edge; border

Examples

河边有很多树。

Hé biān yǒu hěn duō shù.

There are many trees by the river.

边防战士日夜守卫。

Biānfáng zhànshì rìyè shǒuwèi.

The border guards stand watch day and night.

别坐在桌子的边上。

Bié zuò zài zhuōzi de biān shàng.

Don't sit on the edge of the table.

Tips

grammar

Full-tone 边 is the content word: a noun meaning side/edge/border, or the modifier in compounds like 边疆 (frontier), 边境 (border), 海边 (seaside). When it becomes a toneless locality suffix on directional words (上边, 那边), the tone disappears — see the bian page.

usage

Paired 一边...一边... means 'doing X while Y' — e.g. 一边走一边唱 'walking and singing at the same time'. Both occurrences keep full tone.

Components

radical

辶 chuò

to walk; motion (radical form)

The motion radical wraps around the bottom-left, signaling that 边 originally meant 'to go to the edge' — approaching a boundary. From travel along borders came the static noun sense of 'side' or 'edge'. Indexed under Kangxi #162 walking; groups 边 with 进 (enter), 远 (far), 近 (near). Always written last.

phonetic

力 lì

power; strength (phonetic placeholder)

Simplified from traditional 邊 (18 strokes), whose right side was the elaborate phonetic 臱. The 1956 reform replaced that intricate component with a 2-stroke 力 purely for stroke-count economy — the 'strength' meaning is irrelevant here and the sound is only loosely approximate. Treat 力 as a graphic placeholder, not a real phonetic clue.