懷
Symbols Emotions
nostalgia
舊
ㄏㄨㄞˊ ㄐㄧㄡˋ huái jiù
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.
Missing a past that will not come back — most often, in Chinese, missing home.
Before you commit
Choose with careNo single character means nostalgia. 懷 alone reads as chest, or to harbour a thought, and will not be understood as missing the past.
At small sizes懷 is nineteen strokes with a busy right half beside a slim heart radical, and it darkens quickly. 憶 at sixteen is a little cleaner.
Cultural note鄉愁 is specifically homesickness and carries the whole exile tradition of Chinese poetry, from Li Bai to Yu Guangzhong. Use it only if home is the point.
Meaning
Nostalgic; fond of the old days.
The direct word for nostalgia, used of music, films and moods alike.
Other characters for “nostalgia”
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