壁

wall

"corpse + mouth + suffering + earth" The great WALL of China was famously made largely using forced slave labour, and it is even said that the bones of workers who died making the wall were crushed up to make cement to build the wall. The Earth in this character may be a picture of the WALL itself, the Corpse reminds us of the dead bodies, the Mouth tells us that they starved to death, and the Suffering points out that they had a pretty unpleasant time of it. The making of a WALL. by benwhately

Learn Chinese on Memrise

Find other Chinese courses on Memrise