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重建 (chóng jiàn) — to rebuild, to reconstruct (buildings, relationships, systems)

Definition

重建 means to rebuild something that has been damaged or broken — physical things like cities, or abstract things like trust and teams. It implies starting from ruin, unlike 维护 which means to maintain what already works.

verb
to rebuildto reconstruct (buildings, relationships, systems)

Examples

  • ，重建。
    Dì zhèn zhī hòu, tā men yòng le sān nián shí jiān chóng jiàn chéng shì.
    After the earthquake, they spent three years rebuilding the city.
  • 重建。
    Tā men liǎng gè zhèng zài nǔ lì chóng jiàn yǒu yì.
    The two of them are working hard to rebuild their friendship.
  • ，重建。
    Gōng sī pò chǎn hòu, lǎo bǎn jué dìng chóng jiàn tuán duì.
    After the company went bankrupt, the boss decided to rebuild the team.

Origin

Compound word
构词法gòucífǎ
偏正piānzhèngModifier + head

The first part narrows down the second: it says what kind of thing the head is.

重zhòngagain
建jiànbuild

重建 joins 重 'again' and 建 'build' to mean build again.

Characters in this word

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
人人rénman
Sound part声符shēngfú
東
東dōng重zhòng
Close in sound todayThe sound part was a clue two thousand years ago — it often still helps, but not always.

重 developed from a picture of a man carrying a bag, with 人 for the man and 東 for the bag; a later ground element was folded into the form.

Open 重 →

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

  • 廴廴yǐn
  • 聿聿yù

The shape 建 shows 廴 and 聿, but it comes from an older drawing of a hand planting a pole into a base; the lower part of 聿 is not a brush.

Open 建 →
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