Radical 213

龜 亀 龟
212 ⿓ ◄	213	► ⿕ 214
Pinyin :	guī (= turtle)
Zhuyin :	ㄍ ㄨ ㄟ
Hiragana :	か め came
Kanji :	亀 came
Hangul :	거북
Sinocorean :	귀
Codepoint :	U + 9F9C 4E80 9F9F
Stroke sequence :

Bixi

Turtle in the Forbidden City

Radical 213 , meaning “ turtle ”, is one of only two traditional radicals in the Chinese writing with sixteen strokes.

With just a single combination of characters in Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary , it is very rare. In the Kangxi dictionary there were still 24 characters that could be found under this radical.

The oracle bone shape shows a frog, an image that can no longer be recognized in the seal shape .

In China, turtles have always been eaten with pleasure. Around 10 million animals are imported every year. Often it is species that are critically endangered. But even turtle farms have not yet been able to adequately meet demand.

In Asian art, turtles are often depicted, often in palaces, temples and tombs, and it is not uncommon for them to carry a stele with inscriptions on their back as a bixi .

The traditional long form of Radikal 213 can be written in slightly different ways. The variant with interrupted horizontal lines actually needs 18 lines:

• 

  solid lines
• 

  broken lines

Character combinations ruled by radical 213

Strokes	character
+ 00	龜 亀 龟
+ 05	龝
+12	龞

In the Unicode block Kangxi radicals , radical 213 is coded under the code point number 12.244 (U + 2FD4).

literature

• Edoardo Fazzioli : Painted Words. 214 Chinese characters - from picture to concept . Marixverlag, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-937715-34-7 , p. 161 .
• Cecilia Lindqvist : A world of signs - about the Chinese and their writing . Droemer Knaur, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-426-26482-X , p. 87 .

For detailed references, see List of Traditional Radicals: Literature

Web links

Commons : Radikal 213  - Graphic representations of Radikal 213