How to Write 鳜 (guì) — Meaning “mandarin fish”

Picture a fish (鱼) swimming next to a broken wall (厥), where the broken wall looks like two stacked containers with a gap. The 厥 part can be remembered as "the fish (鱼) that jumps over a crumbling cliff (厥)." This helps link the shape to the meaning of a special fish.

The left radical 鱼 is narrow and takes up only about one-third of the character width, while the right part 厥 is wider. Be careful to write the 厂 (cliff) stroke first in 厥, followed by the inner components; a common mistake is making the left fish too wide or forgetting the dot inside the fish's head.

鳜 means mandarin fish and uses the fish radical on the left with 厥 on the right. 鳌 (áo) also has the fish radical but adds a 敖 on top, meaning a legendary huge turtle or the top part of something. 鳍 (qí) uses the fish radical with 耆 on the right and means "fin" of a fish. Visually, 鳜 has the distinctive 厥 shape not found in the others.

鳜 appears mostly in the word 鳜鱼 (guì yú) for mandarin fish, a prized freshwater fish in Chinese cuisine. Famous dishes include 清蒸鳜鱼 (steamed mandarin fish) and the unique 臭鳜鱼 (stinky mandarin fish), a traditional Anhui dish. It is not an HSK character, so learners may only encounter it on menus or when reading about Chinese food culture.

Common words containing 鳜 include: 鳜鱼 (guì yú) — mandarin fish; 清蒸鳜鱼 (qīng zhēng guì yú) — Steamed mandarin fish.; 臭鳜鱼 (chòu guì yú) — Stinky mandarin fish..