生 (shēng): to be born; to give birth

Meanings

1 to be born; to give birth
2 raw; uncooked
3 student; life

Characters

生

shēng

life; birth; raw; student

The character depicts a plant sprouting from the ground.

Examples

HSK 1

他生了一个女儿。

Tā shēng le yí gè nǚ'ér.

She gave birth to a daughter.

HSK 1

这个菜是生的。

Zhège cài shì shēng de.

This dish is raw.

HSK 1

你是哪年生的？

Nǐ shì nǎ nián shēng de?

What year were you born in?

Tips

usage

生 is extremely versatile: 生日 (birthday), 生气 (angry), 生病 (get sick), 学生 (student), 生活 (life), 生词 (new word). It's one of the most common characters in Chinese.

Components

pictograph

生 shēng

to be born; life

Single self-pictograph - a sprout pushing up from soil. The upper three strokes draw the tender shoot with two new leaves; the bottom horizontal is the ground line, with the central stem cutting through it as one continuous figure. Self-radical (Kangxi #100). All the 'life / birth / growth / raw' senses radiate from this one image of new growth breaking through earth.

Radical

Birth; Growth Kangxi #100

A tiny indexing radical. The canonical 生 is enormously common in vocabulary, but very few characters are actually filed under this radical — most living-things words use 艸 (grass) or 木 (tree) instead. Treat 生 here as more of a Kangxi bookkeeping slot than a productive meaning clue.