Skip to content
BishuРусскийTrain

北 — north; to be defeated

Pinyin
běi
Strokes
5
HSK level
HSK 3
Handwriting
required

How to write 北: 5 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. This character is on the HSK handwriting list, so the exam expects you to write it, not only recognise it.

北 — 5 strokes, in writing order from left to right.

Build a printable practice sheet with 北

Words with 北 in the HSK syllabus: 8

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. 北běinorth; to be defeatedHSK 3
  2. 北方běifāngnorth; the northern part a countryHSK 3
  3. 东北dōngběiNortheast China; ManchuriaHSK 3
  4. 西北xīběiNorthwest ChinaHSK 3
  5. 北部běibùnorthern partHSK 4
  6. 北极běijíthe North Pole; the north magnetic poleHSK 6
  7. 北美洲BěiměizhōuNorth AmericaHSK 6
  8. 南辕北辙nányuán-běizhéto act in a way that defeats one's purposeHSK 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.