In most of the books on chinese characters, it is been said that characters can work in different ways. The most common are:
Pictographic characters
At first, most of the Chinese Characters were a graphic representation of an object, person,…
日 (rì) day, sun
山 (shān) mountain
水 (shuǐ) water
Easy to relate, these characters express a concept or idea.
上 (shàng) up
下 (xià) down
一 (yī) one
二 (èr) two
三 (sān) three
In addition to the above, there are combinations of these concepts in many Chinese characters:
森 (sēn) three trees (木) represent a forest.
休 (xiū) a person resting by a tree.
语 (yǔ) the word right side is the character for “word,” right-above is “five” and below is “mouth”, the words spoken by five mouths (people) is a “language”.