Based on the origin of Chinese characters, they have four main categories, the pictographic characters (象形字), the indicative characters (指事字), the associative characters (会意字) and pictophonetic characters (形声字). We will explain the associative characters in this lesson.
We have learnt in our former lessons that the ancient Chinese people used the pictographic characters to represent concrete things and the abstract symbols/strokes or added the abstract symbols/strokes to the pictographic characters to represent a thing, a direction or position. To express an abstract concept, they also created the associative characters. They put two or more pictographic together to describe an action, or something abstract.
We give you some examples to explain the associative characters:
1. 
-----> 好(hǎo, means good).
This picture shows a woman holding her baby: the left part of it is a woman and the right part of it is a child. This is to show the concept of "good", for it is a good thing that a new life is born.
"好": the left part "女", means a woman; the right part "子" means a child.
2. 
-----> 安 (ān, means stability, quietness, safe)
This picture shows a woman staying under a roof, a house: the upper part of it is like covers, a roof or a house, and the lower part of it is a woman. This picture shows the concept of "stability", "quietness", "calmness", "silence". Generally speaking, women do not act restlessly, especially the women in ancient China, so when you have quiet and elegant women at home, your family will be a greatly prosperous family. Women are believed to have the power to stabilize families. When all families are stable, the society and the whole county will be stable.
"安": the upper part "宀" means a roof; the lower part "女", means a woman.
3. 
-----> 君 (jūn, means king)
This picture shows a hand holding a stick and a mouth. It has the concept of a person holding a stick to command others to do work and the mouth is to issue orders, so this somebody can only be the leader of a county, which mean a king, later on this character is used to address somebody respectfully.
"君": the upper part "尹" means a hand holding a stick, which is used as a character, pronounced as "yǐn", is the official title in ancient China; the lower part "口", means a mouth.
Here we have some associative characters, can you match them with their today's versions?
1. 
a.光 (guāng, means light, bright)
2. 
b. 休 (xiū, means to rest)
3. 
c. 采 (cǎi, means to pick)
4. 
d. 从 (cóng, means to follow)
5. 
e. 明 (míng, means bright, clear)
From the examples above, we can easily see that associative characters are the compounds, whose characters are made up of several components.
Answers to the question above:
1. The picture shows a person leaning on a tree to have rest. ---> b. 休
2. The picture shows a sun and a moon ---> e. 明
3. The picture shows a person is standing after/ following another person. ---> d. 从
4. The picture shows a person is holding something burning to get light. ---> a. 光
5. The picture shows a hand is picking something on a tree. ---> c. 采
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