Skip to content
BishuРусскийTrain

元 — currency unit; first; original

currency unit; first; original; primary; basic; fundamental

Pinyin
yuán · Yuán
Strokes
4
HSK level
HSK 1
Handwriting
recognition only

This character has more than one reading — yuán, Yuán — and the pronunciation depends on the word it appears in. The list below gives the syllabus reading for each word.

How to write 元: 4 strokes

Each cell adds one stroke to the previous ones, with the new stroke in red. Stroke order is not decoration: it sets the proportions of the character and makes handwriting legible to a reader. The syllabus asks you to recognise this character rather than write it by hand.

元 — 4 strokes, in writing order from left to right.

Build a printable practice sheet with 元

Words with 元 in the HSK syllabus: 10

Every word in the official 2026 syllabus that contains this character, with the level it is introduced at. Learning a character pays off through these: each one combines with the characters you already know.

  1. 元yuánYuan dynastyHSK 1
  2. 单元dānyuánunit; element; entrance or staircaseHSK 5
  3. 元旦YuándànNew Year's DayHSK 5
  4. 多元duōyuánpoly-; multi-; multielement; multivariantHSK 6
  5. 公元gōngyuánCE; Christian Era; ADHSK 6
  6. 元素yuánsùelement; element; elementHSK 6
  7. 元宵yuánxiāoLantern FestivalHSK 6
  8. 元老yuánlǎosenior figure; doyen; founding member; veteranHSK 7–9
  9. 元首yuánshǒuhead of stateHSK 7–9
  10. 状元zhuàngyuantop scorer in the palace examinationHSK 7–9

Glosses come from CC-CEDICT, used under CC BY-SA 4.0, and are the dictionary’s first sense rather than a translation chosen for context.