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I have seen an old and very rarely used character that consisted of four traditional dragons (龍). As I remember it meant "talkative."

That makes a total of 64 strokes, are there any other characters with more strokes?

blackgreen
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Lars Andren
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1 Answers1

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1. biang

Well, the first one that came to my mind is biang, as in "biang biang mian" - which a quick Wikipedia search shows has 58 strokes. This is still in some use (and I've seen it in restaurants), if that means anything to you. It is not, however, found in dictionaries.

biang

2. zhe

Sadly however, biang doesn't have the most strokes (although I would argue it's the most complex) - Wikipedia has a page on complex characters as well, and according to them zhe, meaning verbosity, was the most complex/has the most stroke orders - possibly the character you are referring to, as it is just long (龍) times four:

zhe

3. zheng

It also mentions zheng, another 64-strokes character meaning flourish, as being equally as complex:

zheng

The page on Wikipedia goes in to a lot more detail, so I suggest you check it out.

blackgreen
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Ciaocibai
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    You could say that 'zhe' is in fact "really, really, really long". – Williham Totland Jan 03 '12 at 09:29
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    I'm sad to admit I lol'ed at that. – Ciaocibai Jan 03 '12 at 09:39
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    Intriguingly, there exists characters all the way through from one to four 'long'. I guess they ran out of characters, and had to start getting 'long'er and 'long'er. – Williham Totland Jan 03 '12 at 09:52
  • Made me giggle at work, funny stuff – Lars Andren Jan 03 '12 at 10:56
  • @Ciaocibai great answer! And many thanks for the link to the article – Lars Andren Jan 03 '12 at 10:57
  • @LarsAndren Glad to be of service, and well worth it for the great comments from Williham! – Ciaocibai Jan 03 '12 at 10:58
  • when i started studying chinese years and years ago, biang looked really complicated... it looks simple now. makes me think of this book: http://www.quaritch.com/NewsItem.asp?id=117 – magnetar Jan 09 '12 at 16:06
  • (tiè) duplicated vertically has 128 strokes, and is listed by Wenlin as the character with most strokes. There is no further information, though. –  Dec 04 '14 at 18:54
  • @Ciaocibai didn't see contact info in your profile. Hoping to ask for your thoughts on a startup idea making it easy to find & discuss interests (like discussing Chinese characters). Would you mind emailing info @ panabee.com? Thanks! – Crashalot Jan 06 '15 at 01:11
  • In the unicode Unihan, there are only 2 characters with 64 strokes, the maximum amount it looks like, and . There is no character with 128 strokes. – Lance May 06 '22 at 01:24