鬼
Symbols Spirit
ghost
ㄍㄨㄟˇ guǐ
Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.
Script
Characters
Same in both
Layout
Rubbing mode: white on black, as a stone rubbing. The download is unaffected.
The dead who have not settled. This character is genuinely unlucky in Chinese, and doubles as an insult and a swear word.
Before you commit
Choose with care鬼 is an insult and an intensifier as much as a noun - 小鬼 brat, 死鬼 you devil, 搞什麼鬼 what the hell. Most Chinese readers find it crude or unlucky on skin rather than gothic.
At small sizesTen strokes with a hook curling off the bottom right. Small versions lose that hook, and without it the character looks broken.
Cultural noteThe seventh lunar month is 鬼月, when offerings are made and people avoid swimming, moving house and weddings. This is live custom, not folklore.
Meaning
A ghost; the spirit of a dead person. Also sly, damned, terrible.
The plain word, the one in every folk story and on the festival.
Other characters for “ghost”
What to do next
Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.
Related concepts