This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
四
In brief: the four images and the cycle of life
Common reading
The manuscript gives no common reading for this character, so none is given here.
Design reading
After three gives rise to the myriad things, there are time and space. 四 corresponds to the four images (yin and yang doubled upon each other) and stands for four-dimensional space-time or the turning of the four directions. Through their sounds the numbers also play out a cycle of life: 一 (formation, all things renewed), 二/两 (sounds like 量, abiding, all things growing), 三 (sounds like 散, decay: ripe fruit falls, the body breaks down), 四 (sounds like 死, “death”, extinction: all things wither). The four characters 东南西北 (east, south, west, north) are the four images (lesser yang in the east, greater yang in the south, lesser yin in the west, greater yin in the north).
Related characters
About this entry
This entry is taken from the edited manuscript of LI Xutong’s Exploring the Design Mysteries of Chinese Characters. The common reading follows traditional philology, the Shuowen Jiezi and other classics, and modern dictionaries; the design reading recovers the rationale of the character’s formation from the meanings of its strokes, the pairing of yin and yang, and the nine-palace layout, following the New Six Scripts. The premise of the design reading, that the generative mechanism of Chinese characters was designed, is an axiom of this system and differs from the evolutionary account usual in philology; the two readings are kept apart, as surface and depth.