Posted 2017/8/3
The Chinese Character, an Interpretable Chinese CultureIn the oracle bone inscriptions, “力” (li, power) is a pictographic character. The curving top part means the plough handle and the bottom refers to the plough head, so it is a very simple symbol of an ancient farm tool and therefore the original meaning of this character is such a tool. As time goes by, this farm tool was then towed by ox instead of man. So the original meaning of “力” is replaced by “犁” (li, plough), and becomes a character carrying the meaning of “power”. The writing styles of small seal script and regular script are all derived from oracle bone inscriptions, in which a rough shape can still be noticed. “力” is also a radical complement in Chinese, and most of the characters comprising of it and other radicals have something to do with the meaning of “power” and “action”, such as “劳” (lao, work), “动” (dong, move) ,“劲” (jing, vigor), “努”(nu, exert) and so on.
