Patterns in Chinese Characters

Progression Patterns

We are about to examine a new category of patterns, which I call progression patterns.  These patterns describe how elements inside a character are arranged, and the order in which they are written.  But before we start using this new term - element - we must define what it is exactly.  The important thing to realize is that Chinese characters can be subdivided into distinct parts.  These parts, which we will refer to as elements, may be arranged horizontally, vertically, or sometimes even stacked inside one another, giving Chinese characters their unique 3-dimensional structure.

Some complex elements may themselves be subdivided into simpler elements.  The simplest, "indivisible" elements (there are only a few hundred of these) can only be decomposed into individual strokes.  Some of these simple elements are valid characters on their own.  Others carry meaning but are mainly used in combination with other elements -- such elements are called radicals.

Identifying elements is not always obvious.  It's useful to be familiar with radicals.  There are over 200 radicals, but knowing a few dozen of the most commonly used ones will go a long way to demystifying Chinese characters.  However, even without knowledge of basic characters or radicals, common sense can be used to discern elements within a character.  The general rule of thumb is, an element is not connected to the rest of the character, so it can be "separated" from the rest of the character without "breaking" any connections (strokes).

pattern p1:  Vertical Progression (category: progression)

Elements arranged vertically are drawn top to bottom. 

The above examples, 'three' (san1), 'sound' (yin1) and 'platform' (tai2), are all composed of multiple vertically stacked elements.  The last character is the most complex, but even here it's not difficult to see that it's made up of four distinct elements.

pattern p2:  Horizontal Progression (category: progression)

Elements arranged horizontally are drawn left to right. 

The above examples are 'bright' (ming2), 'state' (zhou1), and 'countryside' (xiang1), consisting of two, six and three distinct elements, respectively.

pattern p3:  Horizontal Triplets (category: progression)

This pattern is an exception to pattern p2.  It applies to a group of three horizontal elements, where the leftmost and rightmost elements are either the same, or are symmetrical reflections of each other.  In this case, the middle element is drawn first, followed by the left and then the right.

'Small' (xiao3) is the simplest horizontal triplet.  The second example is 'rice porridge' (zhou1), where the enclosed element is the character for rice.  In the remaining examples, 'light' (guang1), 'happy' (le4) and 'to bend' (wan1), notice the triplets on the top of each character:

pattern p4:  Nested Progression (category: progression)

If an element is nested another, it must be completed before the outside element is closed.

This is a tricky pattern, and the simple "inside out" rule just doesn't cut it.  I will discuss several types of enclosing elements, and for clarity I will use arrows to show the correct writing order.

The first type of enclosing element is the large rectangle, meaning "enclosure", with another element inside.  There are many such characters, and they all follow the same writing order.  The top of the rectangle is drawn first, using a vertical stroke and a top right bracket.  The nested element is then filled in, and finally the rectangle is closed on the bottom, as illustrated by 'firm, solid' (gu4):

Enclosing elements do not always surround the nested element on all sides.  In these cases, the enclosing element is drawn last if it surrounds the nested element from the bottom.  A common radical that follows this pattern is "movement" a combination of three strokes, written after the nested element is completed.  As illustrated by 'speed' (su4) and 'tui1' (to retreat), "movement" is written last, after the nested element

Many other enclosing elements are open on the bottom, and these are usually completed before the nested element is written.  See 'sentence' (jü4), 'ghost' (gui3), 'tough' (gang1) and 'disease' (bing4):

pattern p5:  Element Grouping (category: progression)

Every Chinese character has a single overall progression, no matter how complex it is.

So far we've looked at vertical, horizontal, and nested progressions.  Let's call these simple progressions.  It's easy to figure out how to draw a character if it consists of just a simple progression, but what if it is truly multi-dimensional, combining horizontal, vertical and nested progressions?  With these characters, how can we determine the order in which the simple progressions are applied?  The trick is a technique called element grouping.  Basically, starting from the simplest elements, we can group simple progressions into larger, complex elements.  These complex elements can then be grouped with other simple or complex elements in another simple progression, until the complete character emerges.

This explanation is a bit dense, so this pattern is best learned through examples:

In the above examples, I use a construct similar to algebraic equations.  However, instead of addition, subtraction and multiplication, the operations here represent simple progressions.  The numbers and variables are replaced by character elements.  There are three kinds of operations, each corresponding to a simple progression:

• "next to" - a simple horizontal progression

• "on" - a simple vertical progression

• "in" - a simple nested progression

The parantheses are very important as they provide the element grouping, and so tell us the order in which simple progressions are combined to produce the complete character.  One equation may contain zero, one or more of each simple progression.  The 1st example 'insane' (feng1) contains only nested progressions, so the parantheses are not necessary.  The 2nd example 'to float' (piao4) contains both a horizontal and a vertical progression, so the parantheses must be used to show that the vertical elements are grouped first, and the resulting complex element is then grouped with the remaining horizontal element.  The 3rd example 'to follow' (sui2) contains one of each of the three simple progressions.

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