蛽 character

It is a written variant of 貝.

Chinese references give its Mandarin reading as bèi, roughly like “bay” with falling pitch, and gloss it as 貝, the character for a shell or shellfish. The shell-money association belongs to 貝's history; the added 虫 component does not give 蛽 an insect meaning.

The older oracle-bone inscriptions (writing carved on bones and shells), bronze inscriptions, bamboo slips, and seal-script forms trace 貝's history. The earliest documented record of 蛽 is its listing as a variant in 字彙, a 17th-century Chinese dictionary.

Is 蛽 just 貝?

References treat it as the same character in a marked written form.

Chinese variant dictionaries list 蛽 under 貝, and a character database identifies it as the same character. Japanese character references likewise describe it as a shell character and list 貝 as an alternate form. The supported difference is in the written form and editorial choice, not in meaning.

Why does 蛽 show as a box?

That usually means the font lacks the glyph.

蛽 is a text character drawn by your font, so a box can appear when the active font does not support it. In 2024, Taiwan's CNS listing said Windows 10 and later included the glyph.

Try a font or viewer that supports less-common Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters. The text is still 蛽 when the font cannot draw it.