What 桑 means
Mulberry.
Early Chinese oracle-bone inscriptions—writing carved on bone and shell—show a tree-and-leaf form linked to mulberry leaves fed to silkworms. Mulberry growing supported sericulture, the raising of silkworms for silk.
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsIn 桑梓
A literary Chinese term for one's native place, linked to trees around a household.
In 桑田
Mulberry fields; in 沧海桑田, the sea-and-field contrast stands for sweeping change.
Questions people ask
1Why does 桑 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type 桑
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 6851, then Alt+X to get 桑.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “cjk unified ideograph-6851”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 6851, then Enter or Space.
HTML
桑CSS
\6851Chinese pinyin input
With Mandarin pinyin input (Mandarin sounds entered in Latin letters), type sang and select 桑.
Japanese text input
In Japanese text input, type kuwa (くわ) or sou (ソウ), then select 桑; both are Japanese readings.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
桑
HTML hex
桑
CSS content
content: "\6851";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E6%A1%91
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.