活
Symbols Virtues
passion for life
ㄏㄨㄛˊ huó
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.
Being fully alive to your own existence — appetite for living rather than romantic passion.
Before you commit
Choose with careNo one or two characters carry passion for life. 活 alone simply means alive. The complete idea is 熱愛生命, four characters, and shortening it loses the object.
Pairs well with熱愛生命 for the full phrase, 活出自我 for living as yourself, 生氣勃勃 for brimming with life.
At small sizes活 is nine strokes with a clean water radical and a wide open right side. It reduces well and works on curved placements.
Meaning
To live; alive, living, lively.
A single stark character that says live, and reads as an instruction as much as a state.
Other characters for “passion for life”
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