皮 draws a hand peeling a hide off an animal's body: the curved sweep on the left is the pelt, stretched and draped; the hooked stroke is the hand pulling it free. Before paper, before cloth, hide was one of the first materials people learned to take from animals and shape into something new — a drum skin, a coat, a shield.
A piece of culture
Shadow puppets cut from hide China's shadow puppetry, 皮影戏 — literally "hide-shadow drama" — is performed with flat puppets cut from treated donkey or ox hide, painted translucent and worked behind a lit screen on rods. Legend traces it back over 2,000 years to the Han dynasty, when a grieving Emperor Wu of Han was said to glimpse his dead consort's silhouette moving behind a lamplit curtain. Recognized by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage, the art form still travels village to village today, one flickering hide puppet at a time.
Use it in a real word
牛皮
niúpí · ngau4 pei4
cowhide, leather — literally "ox skin"; you already know 牛