工

Because the shape of the character 工 is very simple, scholars have many different theories about what it originally depicted.

The Eastern Han dynasty scholar Xu Shen (許愼), in his book Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字), was the first to interpret this character as a pictograph of a carpenter’s square.

Supporting evidence is that the character 矩 (meaning carpenter’s square) depicts 工 being held by a person (夫) in their hand.

However, later discoveries of oracle bone script and bronze script showed forms quite different from a carpenter’s square, leading to new theories.

One notable scholar, Cecilia Lindqvist from Sweden, author of The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, proposed that 工 is a pictograph of a bellows.

Among Chinese characters, the character 䂫 means bellows; considering its relationship with 紅 (red) and 絳 (deep red), which also involve 工 and 夅/䂫, this interpretation has some validity.