How the character is built
The 气 radical marks this as a gas, and that is not a coincidence of this one character — it holds right across the table. Read the radical first and the element's state at room temperature is already settled.
Where you actually meet it
氦气球 (hàiqìqiú) helium balloon
The element itself
Nearly every helium atom we can get at was made by radioactive decay: an alpha particle is a helium nucleus, so uranium and thorium in deep rock have been quietly exhaling helium for billions of years. A little of what leaks out of the mantle is older still, left over from the planet's assembly. It seeps upward and, in a few lucky places, gets trapped under the same seals that hold natural gas, which is the only reason we have any of it in bulk. Released, it is gone for good — too light for the planet to hold on to — making helium the one industrial material that is genuinely, permanently finite. It was also found in the Sun before it was found on Earth, spotted as an unexplained yellow line during an eclipse.
Where it sits among the 118
First isolated in 1868.
Where it comes from in China
Helium is the one noble gas with a Chinese address, because it is not taken from the air — there is barely any there — but from natural gas, where it collects over hundreds of millions of years as uranium and thorium in the deep basement decay and shed alpha particles that pick up electrons and become helium. The only Chinese field ever worked commercially for it is Weiyuan, in the Sichuan basin, and even there helium is a fraction of one per cent of the gas. It is a thin resource by world standards, which is why most of what the country uses is imported.
The full entry
For stroke order, example sentences, audio and the complete set of meanings, see the dictionary entry.
氦Helium in the dictionary →Others built the same way
Every one of these carries 气, and every one is a gas.