What 膎 means
It means dried meat or meat dishes. Shuowen Jiezi, an early Chinese character dictionary, analyzes 肉 as the meaning element and 奚 as the sound element.
Later Chinese dictionaries also record it for meat as food. Taiwanese Hokkien has a distinct preserved-food use.
A specialized classical or regional food word; language context determines which food sense applies.
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsClassical Chinese dictionaries
Dried meat; broader dictionaries also say meat or meat dishes.
Taiwanese Hokkien compounds 蝦膎 and 鹹膎
As of 2026, these mean salted shrimp and preserved seafood.
Questions people ask
1Why does 膎 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 膎
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 818E, then Alt+X to get 膎.
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-818e”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 818e, then Enter or Space.
HTML
膎CSS
\818EChinese Pinyin IME
Enter xié (xie with rising tone) and select 膎 from the candidates.
Cangjie
Enter BBVK in a Cangjie input method.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
膎
HTML hex
膎
CSS content
content: "\818E";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E8%86%8E
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.