Learning Materials
Kangxi Radicals
Learn the 214 Chinese Radicals found in the Kangxi list.
Image by Chapman Chow
About the Kangxi list
The 214 Kangxi radicals (Chinese: 康熙 Kāng xī 部首 bù shǒu ; pinyin: Kāngxī bùshǒu), also known as the Zihui radicals, form a system of radicals (部首 bù shǒu ) of Chinese characters. The radicals are numbered in stroke count order. They are the most popular system of radicals for dictionaries that order Traditional Chinese characters (hanzi, hanja, kanji, chữ hán) by radical and stroke count. Initially introduced in the 1615 Zihui ( 字彙 ), they are more commonly named in the Kangxi Dictionary of 1716 (Kāngxī 康熙 Kāng xī being the era name for 1662–1723).
Modern Chinese dictionaries continue to use the Kangxi radical-stroke order, both in traditional zìdiǎn (字典 zì diǎn , lit. “character/logograph dictionary”) for written Chinese characters and modern cídiǎn (詞典 “word/phrase dictionary”) for verbal expressions. The 214 Kangxi radicals act as a de facto standard, which may not be duplicated precisely in every Chinese dictionary, but which few dictionary compilers can afford to ignore completely.