BeginChinese
every character tells a story
The ancient form
Today

zhòng · zung3

crowd; many

Where it comes from

One person 人 walks alone. Three people together are 众 — the crowd, the many, everyone. On the oracle bones they march under the burning sun, workers in the fields of the king. Where 从 is one person following another, 众 is all of us at once.

A piece of culture

People mountain, people sea
When a Chinese street is truly packed, people say 人山人海 — "people mountain, people sea", a crowd like a mountain range, like an ocean. It is a chengyu: a four-character idiom, the polished proverbs Chinese has collected for two thousand years. You can already read all four characters of this one. And the biggest car brand in China? 大众 — Volkswagen, "the great many", the people's car, translated straight into two characters you own.

Use it in a real word

大众
dàzhòng ·
the public; the masses — and the Chinese name of Volkswagen
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