Chinese character 靦

The surrounding word decides the reading. 《說文解字》, an early Chinese character dictionary, glosses 靦 as 面見人, “showing one’s face to others,” and cites 有靦面目 from 《詩經·小雅·何人斯》, a poem in an early Chinese poetry collection.

Classical Chinese preserves both shame and shameless senses. A play from China's Yuan dynasty, a period in Chinese history, uses 靦腆/靦覥 for bashfulness; a Japanese kanji dictionary defines 靦然 as unabashed.