Skip to content
BishuРусскийTrain

左 — left; the Left; east

left; the Left; east; unorthodox; queer; wrong; differing

Pinyin
zuǒ · Zuǒ
Strokes
5
HSK level
HSK 2
Handwriting
recognition only

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

How to write 左: 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. The syllabus asks you to recognise this character rather than write it by hand.

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

Build a printable practice sheet with 左

Words with 左 in the HSK syllabus: 4

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. 左zuǒleft; the Left; east; unorthodox; queer; wrongHSK 2
  2. 左边zuǒbianleft; the left side; to the left ofHSK 2
  3. 左右zuǒyòuleft and right; nearby; approximately; attendantHSK 4
  4. 左顾右盼zuǒgù-yòupànglancing to left and right; to look all aroundHSK 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.