diàn
noun #34,686

Meanings

  1. 1 suburbs; outskirts (classical)
  2. 2 outlying royal lands (in ancient Chinese geography)
  3. 3 common element in northern Chinese place names

Examples

Tā zài Běijīng Hǎi diàn qūzhǎng dà.
He grew up in Haidian District, Beijing.
Miǎndiàn wèiyú Zhōngguó de xīnán fāng.
Myanmar is to the southwest of China.
Huà diàn shì Jílínshěng de yíge xiànjíshì.
Huadian is a county-level city in Jilin Province.

Tips

culture
Today the meaning survives mainly in place names: (Haidian, Beijing's tech hub), (in Jilin), and crucially 缅甸 (Miǎndiàn = Myanmar/Burma) where it forms part of the country name.

Components

radical
tián
field (radical)
Field radical inside the wrap — the indexing radical. Pictures a plot of land divided by paths, the canonical image of agriculture. In it ties the character to land/territory vocabulary alongside , , , and underlies the modern use of as a suffix in northern Chinese place names.
semantic
bāo
wrap radical
Outer wrap radical hooking around the top-right — pictures a body bent over something it embraces. Here it encloses (field), suggesting the cultivated land wrapped under royal authority. Classical named the outer royal domains beyond the capital, fields under the king's reach.

Stroke Order

diàn