符
Symbols Memory
token
ㄈㄨˊ fú
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.
A physical thing standing for something larger - a promise, an authority, a bond. Chinese has several words and they are not interchangeable.
Before you commit
Choose with care符 will read to most people today as a Taoist paper talisman, the yellow strips pasted over doorways. That association is strong and hard to shift.
At small sizesEleven strokes under a bamboo radical. The two short bamboo strokes on top merge first - keep it above a couple of centimetres.
Cultural note兵符 was the tiger-shaped bronze tally split between ruler and general. Only the two halves brought together could move an army.
Meaning
A tally; a matching token proving identity or authority. Also a Taoist charm.
Originally a tally split in two, each half proving the other genuine.
Other characters for “token”
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