market

市

ㄕˋ shì

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

Layout

The place where buying and selling happen, and by extension the market for a thing. The same character also means city.

Before you commit

Choose with care市 will be read as city at least as often as market. On its own it looks like an address fragment - the way the word City looks on a sign rather than a statement.

Pairs well with市場 for the market itself, 城市 for a city, 夜市 for the night markets Taiwan is known for. Any of these removes the ambiguity.

At small sizesFive strokes, wide and open, with one long vertical. Very clean at any size and forgiving on curved skin.

Meaning

Market; also city, and the municipal level of government.

Both senses are alive - a wet market and Taipei City use the same character.

Other characters for “market”

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