An open hand traced from life: a middle finger standing tallest, two more spreading to the sides, a thumb curving out below them, and the wrist trailing down into the arm. Everything a hand can do lives on inside characters that carry 手 or its compressed cousin 扌: to hold (拿), to pull (拉), to push (推), to hit (打). If a character shows work being done with fingers, look for the hand hiding inside it.
A piece of culture
Counting to ten on one hand In much of northern China, market traders count all the way to ten on a single hand. One to five look the way you would guess, but from there the shapes turn clever: six is thumb and pinky spread like a phone held to the ear, seven pinches three fingers to a point, eight makes a pistol with thumb and index finger, nine hooks a single curled index finger, and ten is either a closed fist or two crossed index fingers. Stallholders in busy markets use it to name a price across a noisy street, or across a language they don't share — a whole number system, the ones you met in chapter five, folded into a single hand.
Use it in a real word
手心
shǒuxīn · sau2 sam1
the palm — literally "hand-heart", the center of the hand; also used for being firmly "in someone's palm"