A young shoot breaking out of the earth, first leaves unfolding: to be born, to grow, life itself. It is the same hopeful drawing every gardener knows — and the perfect character for this course, where everything you learn is planted, roots, and grows.
A piece of culture
Long noodles, red eggs A Chinese birthday (生日, "life day") comes with edible wishes. The birthday meal is a bowl of longevity noodles (长寿面) — one impossibly long noodle you must not bite through, for the longer the noodle, the longer the life. A newborn's first month is celebrated with eggs dyed red, the color of luck. And elders' birthdays get peaches, real or made of dough: in legend, the peaches of immortality ripen once every three thousand years.
Use it in a real word
生日
shēngrì · saang1 jat6
birthday — "life day"; you have known 日 since day one