Design Readings of Characters
Every character for which LI Xutong's Exploring the Design Mysteries of Chinese Characters gives a design reading: 167 characters, one article each, grouped as in the book, from strokes and components to single-unit and compound characters. Choose a character to read its common reading first, then its design reading.
The common reading is that of traditional philology 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. Its premise, that the generative mechanism of Chinese characters was designed, is an axiom of this system and differs from the evolutionary account usual in philology. Where the manuscript gives only a design reading, no common reading is invented.