Kanji Character #6 - HITO

HITO ("JIN")

What is this symbol and why do I keep running into it everywhere?  This is what I would commonly ask myself while in Japan and China.  When I finally learned what it meant, I was like.. "oh... DUH." Hito is the symbol for "people".  It can also mean human being, person, man or personality.  It kind of looks like a person with two legs doesn't it?

The first thing that was hit me while I was walking through the streets of Shanghai in my first night in China was "WOW CHINA HAS A LOT OF PEOPLE.."  Never had I seen such crowded streets, not even around Times Square in New York City.  

My first night EVER in Asia - letting the crowd take me
through Nanjing Road in Shanghai, China

It was almost impossible not to hit someone, and out of custom I would always utter "excuse me", or "I'm sorry".  The Chinese people that felt the mild blows of my body hitting them payed no mind, this was completely normal for them.  Also, if someone was in a hurry, they did not care who was walking in front of them.  They would not be reluctant to hit past you or shove you to the side.  It never bothered me, though.  I think if I were raised in a city with these kind of street conditions I would have to do the same thing to get to where I need to.  There were times that I felt as though the sea of people was literally taking me away and guiding me through the city.  Maybe I was also on automatic partly from the exhaustion of the 12-hour flight.  Eventually I found myself stunned as I reached the end of what I realized was the pedestrian Nanjing Road, all the way to the Huangpu River.  The site was breathtaking!

Shanghai Skyline from across the Huangpu River

Now for the Kanji!

人
Kunyomi:  ひと - "hito"
Onyomi: ジン - "jin", ニン - "nin"
Meaning: people

Jōyō Kanji taught in grade 1
JLPT level N5
5 of 2500 most common used kanji in newspapers.

Some common compounds in Japanese using the hito character (followed by the hiragana spelling, the romanji spelling and then English meaning):

個人 - こじん - "kojin" - individual

人生 - じんせぃ - "jinsei" - life

日本人 - にほんじん - "nihonjin" - Japanese people

人柄 - ひとがら - "hitogara" - personality



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