11
votes
Accepted
How to look up seal script characters?
For a freely available method, Guoxuedashi offers an interface to look up seal script characters.
Prerequisites:
Internet Explorer (seal script links do not dislpay properly on other browsers, ...
- 22.2k
11
votes
Accepted
Does this building on chinese painting exist for real ? May the text which come along be of any help?
the building exists, it’s called “turtle tower”, in hanoi, vietnam:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoàn_Kiếm_Lake
- 15.1k
10
votes
Has Unicode included these Classical Chinese characters?
𢂎 U+2208E
𦩳 U+26A73
𥸷 U+25E37
𤭹 U+24B79
𠰉 U+20C09
𢮿 U+22BBF
𦧴 U+269F4
𢜫 U+2272B
𤍐 U+24350
𢃛 U+220DB
𤟔 U+247D4
𣩒 U+23A52
𩵖 U+29D56
𪇇 U+2A1C7
𩬱 U+29B31
𤜅 U+24705
﨣 U+FA23
𥺝 U+25E9D
髟＋忿？(...
- 5,886
7
votes
Characters which have several different shapes
To answer the queries directly:
Are all of these different styles of the same characters used in China
as well, or are they specific to Japan? Is it important for me to
learn about them (i.e. ...
- 22.2k
7
votes
Stamped Chinese characters on a banknote
Read right to left, top to bottom.
富行揀選
樣券
富行 was short for 雲南富滇銀行 (The Yunnan "Fu-Tien" Bank), 揀選 meant "select, pick".
樣券 means "banknote sample".
PS: Welcome to ...
- 6,073
7
votes
What does this mean in English, very few words (Screenshot inside)?
illusional romance
梦幻：梦是睡觉时的妄想，幻是魔术师的表演。二个都是虚假的。
情缘：情通常指男女爱情，缘是缘分(the fate, the lot, the second cause)。
补充：
'梦幻' also means '美好的'(extraordinary, too good to be true)。
For example: 梦幻音乐。 It means ...
- 1,328
7
votes
How to look up seal script characters?
Looking up seal characters is not as hopeless as other answers seem to indicate, even though it is considerably harder than looking up modern characters. In any case, the lookup needs to consist of ...
- 1,660
7
votes
What do these two characters on cufflinks signify? (Characters identified: 福 and 壽/夀)
A technique for ‘solving’ such a problem without a human translator
I pretend I did not know Chinese, I use 'Chinese hand writing input' on my iPad to mimic the brush strokes in the image you posted ...
- 77.1k
7
votes
Can someone please help me translate the writing on my dizi flute?
So it's a very famous line from a very famous poem：
九月九日忆山东兄弟
【唐】王维
独在异乡为异客，每逢佳节倍思亲。
遥知兄弟登高处，遍插茱萸少一人。
It means:
独自远离家乡难免总有一点凄凉，[Leaving home alone is a little melancholic, so homesick]
每到重阳佳节倍加思念远方的亲人。...
- 448
7
votes
Accepted
Does anyone know what character ⿰彳⿱㚘心 is?
Surely, that's a variant of 愆 (U+6106)/𠎝 (U+2039D) 'fault, mistake, error, transgression'. In fact, GlyphWiki records exactly the variant under question as 'cbeta-15523', CBETA being the digital ...
- 966
6
votes
The character 双 in the dish name 炒双冬。
I think it's 炒双冬. 双 here means two. One 冬 is 冬菇, also known as 香菇, a kind of mushroom, lentinus edodes. The other 冬 refers to 冬笋, bamboo shoots.
- 670
6
votes
Accepted
Mnemonic or Glyph Origin for 御
「御」 originally meant to operate or manage/control, then extended to mean the adjective imperial.
The meaning to drive a carriage is specifically held by the character 「馭」; when 「御」 is used for this ...
- 22.2k
6
votes
Accepted
Are the characters for sleep and feel the same?
Chinese characters can have multiple meanings and multiple pronunciations. You figure out the intended pronunciation and meaning based on the context. In the context 睡觉 （Shuìjiào，"go to sleep"), the ...
- 655
6
votes
Accepted
Are these chinese characters understandable?
It is plain as day that the two characters in both version of the logo are 烏黑 (pitch-black)in native Chinese's eyes.
The top stroke of 烏 doesn't need to touch the frame, but you can't remove it if ...
- 77.1k
6
votes
Accepted
Does this box in the movie 妖猫传 (Legend of the Demon Cat) say 鳳栖樓 on its lid and 私人必死 inside, and what do they mean?
Never saw the movie.
鳳栖樓 should be the name of the building. You are mentioning there is a key in the box, so it is probably the building where the key is for.
As the note inside the box, you got ...
- 8,725
6
votes
Accepted
What is this character? How to identify it?
The character is the Shuowen seal form of「克」.
「克」was originally a compound of「由」(a helmet, top part of「冑」) and a reduced form of「皮」(an animal being skinned for its hide, with the action being ...
- 22.2k
6
votes
What are the characters on this seal? (Characters identified: 李濟懋印)
As the other answer stated, the characters are 李濟懋印.
Approximate idea of character development - this may not be strictly how the characters evolved over the years.
李
「李」(originally a kind of ...
- 22.2k
6
votes
This is a seal on a porcelain piece. I am not sure if it is from China or Japan. Can anyone tell me what it says? (Characters identified: 大明嘉靖年製)
From right to left, up to down:
大明嘉靖年製
Made during the Jiajing era of Great Ming
大明 is the official name of the Ming dynasty. 嘉靖年 refers to the Jiajing era (1521–67). 製 is a verb meaning 'to make', ...
- 5,595
6
votes
Accepted
What are these two characters?
according to 教育部異體字字典, the first one is a variant of “鵬”:
https://dict.variants.moe.edu.tw/variants/rbt/word_attribute.rbt?quote_code=QTA0NzM4
the second one “氵”+“屰”, maybe it’s not chinese, a cjkv ...
- 15.1k
5
votes
Accepted
An unknown, calligraphic Traditional Chinese character (Character identified: 常)
What you posted is 常 (pinyin: chang2).
It means always or often, and with New Year decorations, can appear in combination for example in well-wishing phrases about happiness, fortunes, health, etc.
...
- 500
5
votes
Accepted
What is the name of the university in this seal?
It reads:
早稻田
大學
圖書
A Japanese Waseda University collection.
- 576
5
votes
Accepted
How can I search for a Chinese character when I see it on a picture?
With pictures OCR is your best bet.
Here’s a screenshot I took of the front page of baidu just now:
Then I use Pleco’s OCR software to see what the titles Chinese characters are
here you can see ...
Mou某♦
- 35.7k
5
votes
What do these two characters on cufflinks signify? (Characters identified: 福 and 壽/夀)
@水巷孑蠻 has already provided the correct answer - I just want to provide some additional methods for getting the answer.
I took your written characters and put them into Pleco's OCR software:
Your 福 ...
Mou某♦
- 35.7k
5
votes
Chinese Poem And Seal Translation Needed
the text, with my best guess:
水殿亭¹亭荷 飛鳧浴³晚波 香
凮²吹不斷 時送采蓮歌 為
兆南五兄大人雅正之
丁酉冬月石泉何濂畫
¹the actual character is a variant (u+20158), i guess most os, app can't display it correctly. have a look of this ...
- 15.1k
5
votes
Accepted
5
votes
Please translate the image (Characters identified: 虾炒饭（大）)
It is 虾炒飯（大）. The one stoke in the middle had faded out, the ink just fell off
Appearnently it is “Shrimp fried rice (large)” on a menu
- 77.1k
5
votes
Please help identify traditional Chinese painting
Starting from the seal script, the left character is either 歡 or 觀 (from 趙孟頫 as well). I can't guess which one because the top-right part is blurred. As for the right-hand side one, I don't know ...
- 781
5
votes
What is the signature and red seal on my landscape painting? (Characters identified: 廣城作)
Regular script transcription
The cursive calligraphy says
作廣
城
Work of 廣城 (Mandarin Pinyin: Guǎng Chéng)
The seal says
⿸厂𡕛 （廣）
𩫨 （城）
廣城
Where 廣城 is the artist's name (probably using a ...
- 22.2k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible