茶 chá — tea

A way to remember it

茶 is grass above, person in the middle, tree below — a picker standing in the bushes. The word travelled out of China twice and split in two. Overland along the Silk Road it went as chá, which is why Russian has chai, Turkish çay, Hindi chai, Arabic shāy. By sea from the Fujian coast it went as the local pronunciation te, which is why English has tea, French thé, Spanish té. Almost every word for tea on earth is one of those two syllables, and which one a language got tells you how the tea arrived.

A picture that makes the shape stick — not a claim about the character’s history.