Skip to content
BishuРусскийTrain

牛 — ox; cow; bull

ox; cow; bull; newton; awesome

Pinyin
niú · Niú
Strokes
4
HSK level
HSK 1
Handwriting
recognition only

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

How to write 牛: 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.

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

Build a printable practice sheet with 牛

Words with 牛 in the HSK syllabus: 5

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. 牛奶niúnǎicow's milkHSK 1
  2. 牛niúox; cow; bull; newton; awesomeHSK 3
  3. 牛仔裤niúzǎikùjeansHSK 5
  4. 吹牛chuīniúto talk big; to brag; to shoot off one's mouthHSK 7–9
  5. 对牛弹琴duìniú-tánqínlit. to play the lute to a cowHSK 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.