部首radical (行)部件component (rest of character)书写your drawing
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字源zìyuánEtymology & Structure
字源洞见 zìyuán dòngjiàn · Etymological Insight
街 = 行 + 圭. The frame is 行 (xíng), the walk radical, which in oracle-bone script is a pictograph of two roads crossing: a four-way intersection drawn as paths meeting at a hub. The radical splits down the middle and the rest of the character is set inside its open center, so the whole glyph reads as something held within the crossing of roads.
Nested in that opening is 圭 (guī), the phonetic. 圭 is a tapered jade tablet, two 土 (earth) stacked, an emblem a noble held at court. It lends 街 its sound (圭 guī steering toward jiē) and contributes nothing to the meaning; the sense comes entirely from 行. This is a textbook pictophonetic build: 行 semantic, 圭 phonetic.
Shuōwén Jiězì glosses 街 as 四通道也, "a road open in all four directions," which is exactly the picture 行 supplies. A 街 is not a lane or a back alley but a public way wide enough to carry traffic both ways, the artery of a walled city laid out on a grid. From that concrete sense of a paved cross-route the word spread to mean the urban street in general, then by extension the shops and crowds that line it, so 逛街 (guàngjiē) came to mean strolling and shopping rather than merely walking a road.
Japanese keeps the character as 街 (kai, machi) for a town quarter or district, and Korean reads it 가 (ga) in compounds; in both, the original sense of a built-up public way survives intact.
通衢tōngqúThe Public Way
街道jiēdàostreet; (urban) subdistrict
N 名词 míngcí
街 (street) + 道 (road, way). The everyday word for a city street. In administrative use it also names the smallest urban division, the 街道办事处 (jiēdào bànshìchù), a neighborhood subdistrict office.
辨析 biànxī · 街道 vs. 马路街道 is the street as a named place and unit; 马路 (mǎlù) emphasizes the roadway surface you cross or that cars run on.
大街dàjiēmain street; avenue
N 名词 míngcí
大 (big) + 街 (street). A broad, busy thoroughfare, the high street of a town. Pairs with 小巷 (xiǎoxiàng, narrow lane) in the set phrase 大街小巷, meaning every street and alley.
周末的大街上人很多。
Zhōumò de dàjiē shàng rén hěn duō.
The main street is crowded on weekends.
街头jiētóustreet corner; on the streets
N 名词 míngcí
街 (street) + 头 (head, end). The mouth of a street or the streetside in general. It frames public, open-air activity: 街头艺人 (jiētóu yìrén) a street performer, 街头篮球 (jiētóu lánqiú) streetball.
一位街头艺人在拉小提琴。
Yí wèi jiētóu yìrén zài lā xiǎotíqín.
A street performer is playing the violin.
辨析 biànxī · 街头 vs. 街尾街头 is the head of the street, 街尾 (jiēwěi) the far end; together 从街头到街尾 means from one end to the other.
街市jiēshìStreet Life
逛街guàngjiēto stroll around shopping
VO 动宾 dòngbīn
逛 (to stroll, wander) + 街 (street). A verb-object pair: to roam the streets with no fixed errand, window-shopping as much as buying. The default leisure activity in any Chinese city.
She loves strolling the shops with friends most of all.
辨析 biànxī · 逛街 vs. 购物逛街 is the leisurely act of wandering; 购物 (gòuwù) is the transaction of buying. You can 逛街 for hours and buy nothing.
街坊jiēfangneighbor; the neighborhood
N 名词 míngcí
街 (street) + 坊 (a city ward). The people who share your street, your neighbors in the old close-knit sense. 街坊邻居 (jiēfang línjū) is the warm collective phrase for the whole neighborhood.
街 (street) + 区 (district, zone). A block or built-up quarter bounded by streets. Common in urban planning and real-estate talk: 商业街区 (shāngyè jiēqū) a commercial district.
Zhège lǎo jiēqū bǎoliú le hěn duō chuántǒng jiànzhù.
This old neighborhood has kept many traditional buildings.
成语chéngyǔIdioms & Set Phrases
大街小巷dà jiē xiǎo xiàngbig streets and small lanes: everywhere in townThe standard way to say all over the city, every street and back alley. Neutral register, extremely common in news and speech: 大街小巷都挂满了灯笼, lanterns hung all over the streets.
街头巷尾jiē tóu xiàng wěistreet corners and lane ends: all about town, on everyone's lipsNames the public places where people gather and gossip. Often used of news or rumor that has spread everywhere: 这件事在街头巷尾传开了, the story spread to every corner of town.
街谈巷议jiē tán xiàng yìstreet talk and lane discussion: common gossip, popular chatterThe talk of the town, idle public discussion of an affair. Carries a faintly dismissive tone, the chatter of ordinary streets as opposed to considered opinion.
花街柳巷huā jiē liǔ xiàngflower streets and willow lanes: the pleasure quartersA classical euphemism for the red-light district, where 花 (flower) and 柳 (willow) stand for courtesans. Literary and old-fashioned; appears in Ming and Qing fiction.
记忆法 jìyìfǎ · Master Retention Image
Stand at the center of an old walled city at dusk. The 行 radical is the intersection itself: two roads crossing under your feet, the left and right halves of the character splitting apart like the four arms of the junction. Cart wheels groove the stone in both directions, and you can hear footsteps coming from every side.
Set into the heart of the crossing, between the two halves, is the jade tablet 圭, two blocks of earth (土) stacked one on the other. Picture a paving stone marker dropped at the exact center of the intersection, a small jade boundary post that says: here is where the public ways meet. It carries the sound, jiē, but it sits there silent, a mute marker letting the crossroads 行 do all the talking.
Once the crossroads is fixed in mind, every compound radiates out from it. Walk one arm and you are on the 大街 (dàjiē), the big street; turn a corner to the 街头 (jiētóu); drift along the shopfronts and you are 逛街 (guàngjiē), strolling; greet the people who live along it, your 街坊 (jiēfang). Every word is just another step taken from that one stone crossing.
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