箈

On a Chinese Pinyin keyboard, try tai first. Pinyin lets you enter Mandarin with Latin letters; chi is another listed Pinyin spelling for this character. If it does not appear, use handwriting lookup or search by its bamboo component or stroke count.

What does 箈 mean in older texts?

In the Zhouli food passage, it means a young bamboo shoot. The Zhouli, an early Chinese text about rites and government, lists 箈菹 among pickled foods; its commentary reads 箈 as 箭萌, a young arrow-bamboo shoot. For that passage, bamboo shoot is the stronger reading.

The Han-era Shuowen Jiezi, an early Chinese dictionary, glosses related graph 䈚 as 竹萌 (“bamboo sprout”). The Zhouli commentaries also preserve disagreement between that bamboo-shoot reading and a water-film gloss; other dictionary entries record water film or moss and a kind of bamboo for 箈. Related graph 菭 is tied to the water-plant sense.