杏 | xìng

In Mandarin Chinese, 杏 (Pinyin: xìng 🔊) means “apricot”. 杏 “is one of the 1000 most commonly used words” in the Collins Chinese Dictionary, although it does not explain why it’s so extremely common.

Lawrence J. Howell explains in his Etymological Dictionary of Han/Chinese Characters:

口 mouth + 木 tree/wood → apricot (← tree fruit savored in the mouth). Compare 梅, a closely related fruit thought to be beneficial for pregnant women on account of its voluminous production.

Some interesting compounds of 杏 include

• 杏 + 仁 “kernel” = 杏仁 (xìngrén): almond
• 杏 + 月 = 杏月 (Xìngyuè): the second month of the Chinese lunar calendar
• 杏 + 林 = 杏林 (xìnglín): literally, “apricot forest”; figuratively, “fine doctor” or “medical field”. According to Wiktionary, this meaning comes

  from the story of the famed physician Dong Feng [3^rd c. CE], who refused to accept payments from his patients, and instead asked patients successfully cured of ailments to plant apricot trees. A forest of apricot trees came to surround his home as a testament to his skill.

• 银 / 銀 “silver”, “money” + 杏 = 银杏 / 銀杏 (yínxìng): ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba)

More photos related to apricots, almonds, ginkgo, hanzi and calligraphy @ 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.