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进城 (jìn chéng) — to go into town / to enter the city; to move to a big city (to live and work)

Definition

进城 has two main uses: simply 'to go into town / enter the city' (e.g. 明天我和你一起进城), and the broader sense of 'to move to a big city' for work or life (e.g. many rural young people choose 进城打工). It is a verb-object phrase, separable as 进了两次城.

verb
to go into town / to enter the cityto move to a big city (to live and work)

Examples

  • 进城。
    Míng tiān wǒ hé nǐ yì qǐ jìn chéng.
    Tomorrow I'll go into town with you.
  • 。
    Tā qù nián jìn guò yí cì chéng zhǎo gōng zuò.
    He went to the city once last year to look for a job.
  • 进城。
    Hěn duō nóng cūn nián qīng rén xuǎn zé jìn chéng dǎ gōng.
    Many rural young people choose to go to the city for work.

Origin

Compound word
构词法gòucífǎ
动宾dòngbīnVerb + object

An action followed by what it acts on, fused into one word.

进jìnenter
城chéngcity

进 means enter and 城 means city, so the action is directed toward a city.

Characters in this word

Two or more meaningful parts placed together so that their meanings combine into a new one.

This origin belongs to the traditional form 進; 进 is its simplified writing.

  • 辵辵chuòwalk
  • 隹隹zhuīshort-tail bird

The traditional form 進 pairs 辵 (walk) with 隹 (short-tail bird): the picture showed moving forward because a bird can only walk forward, not backward. The simplified 进 is a later shorthand.

Open 进 →

Most characters — around four in five — are built this way: one part hints at the meaning, the other at the pronunciation.

Meaning part形符xíngfú
土土tǔsoil
Sound part声符shēngfú
成
成chéng城chéng
Same sound today

城 pairs 土 (soil) with 成 as a sound part, because city walls were originally made of stamped earth.

Open 城 →
Appears in
City & Urban

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