季 | jì

In Mandarin Chinese, 季 (Pinyin: jì 🔊) is a noun that means “quarter of a year” or “season”. 四季 (sìjì), naturally, refers to four seasons, i.e. 春 (spring), 夏 (summer), 秋 (autumn) and 冬 (winter). Some other compound words of 季 include

• 季 + 风 = 季风 (jìfēng 🔊): monsoon
• 雨 + 季 = 雨季 (yǔjì): rainy season
• 花 + 季 = 花季 (huājì): the flower of one’s youth
• 月 + 季 = 月季 (yuèjì): China rose (Rosa chinensis)

According to Wiktionary, 季 is an ideogrammic compound of 禾 “grain” and 子 “a child”, “a seed” etc.

More photos related to rice, cereals, grains and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

禾 | hé

In Mandarin Chinese, 禾 (Pinyin: hé 🔊) is a noun that means “rice plant” or, more generally “grain” or “cereal”. As a radical, 禾 is found in many hanzi related to crops and farming.

According to Wiktionary, 禾 is a pictogram of a plant stalk. I’m sure you’ve noted the similarity with 木 “tree” and 米 “rice”.

More photos related to rice, cereals, grains and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

米 | mǐ

In Mandarin Chinese, 米 (Pinyin: mǐ 🔊) means “rice”. Another, quite unrelated, meaning is “metre” (a base unit of length in the International System of Units), a phonetic approximation of an English loanword.

We’ve already met this symbol as a part of the traditional character 氣 (qì). Uncle Hanzi says that originally 米 represented a spike of rice. From the modern shape, it’s difficult to say. Given that rice was the staple food in China for millennia, one can imagine that a simple but widely recognisable symbol was in order to conduct everyday business — for example, to jot down how many portions of rice have been ordered.

More photos of rice @ Shutterstock.