三 | sān

In Mandarin Chinese, 三 (Pinyin: sān 🔊) means “three” or “third”.

To write the character 三, start with 二, that is, a shorter upper stroke and a longer lower stroke, then sandwich an even shorter stroke between them. Speaking of sandwiches: 三 really looks like one, while 三明治 (sānmíngzhì 🔊) is just a phonetic borrowing of English word “sandwich”. Could that help to remember the pronunciation of 三?

As one could expect, the Chinese hand sign for “three” is three extended fingers.

There are several other hanzi with the same meaning, such as 參 and 叁, mainly used for financial purposes. You can easily discern the three strokes there.

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