仙 (xiān): immortal

Measure Word

一位仙 wèi

Meanings

1 immortal
2 fairy
3 celestial being

Examples

HSK 3

传说山上住着一位老仙。

Chuánshuō shānshàng zhù zhe yī wèi lǎo xiān.

Legend says an old immortal lives on the mountain.

HSK 3

她美得像仙女一样。

Tā měi de xiàng xiānnǚ yīyàng.

She is as beautiful as a fairy.

Tips

culture

仙 (immortals) are central to Daoism and Chinese mythology. The 八仙 (Eight Immortals) are among the most famous figures in Chinese folklore.

memory

亻 (person) + 山 (mountain) - a person who lives on a mountain, i.e., an immortal hermit.

Components

radical

亻 rén

person (radical form)

Left indexing person-variant 亻 - anchors 仙 as a kind of being. Daoist immortals are not gods from another realm but humans who attained transcendence; the person-radical preserves this human origin. Same family of person-types: 仁, 任, 仇, 仔, 你.

semantic

山 shān

mountain

Right component 山 (mountain) - pure semantic, picturing the home of the immortal. Daoist xian retreated to remote mountain peaks (Wudang, Hua, Kunlun) to cultivate longevity. The whole character literally reads mountain person - one of the most transparent compound ideographs in the dictionary.