生

to be born; to live; raw

No. 35 most used · 0.38% of everyday spoken Chinese: about 1 character in every 266.

How it's built

• 土earth

A way to remember it

A shoot growing up out of the earth (土): life.

Words

• 先生

  xiān sheng

  teacher; gentleman; sir; mister (Mr.); husband
• 发生

  fā shēng

  to happen; to occur; to take place; to arise (e.g. 发生问题 "a problem arises")
• 生活

  shēng huó

  to live; life; livelihood
• 医生

  yī shēng

  doctor; medical practitioner
• 生命

  shēng mìng

  life (as the characteristic of living beings); living being; creature (CL:条)
• 人生

  rén shēng

  life (one's time on earth)

Sentences

• 一共有十多个学生。

  yí gòng yǒu shí duō gè xué sheng

  There are about ten to twenty students in total.
• 今天也是我的生日。

  jīn tiān yě shì wǒ de shēng rì

  Today is my birthday, too.
• 今天发生了什么事？

  jīn tiān fā shēng le shén me shì

  What happened today?
• 他是一个生物学家。

  tā shì yí ge shēng wù xué jiā

  He is a biologist.

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How often characters are written: wordfreq by Robyn Speer, CC BY-SA 4.0, with data from Google Books Ngrams and SUBTLEX by Marc Brysbaert and others. Meanings: CC-CEDICT, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sentences: Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR. How often they're said: FrequencyWords and OPUS, from OpenSubtitles.