初
chū HSK3

beginning

初 chū
beginning directional
the initial stage or start of a period of time or a process

这本小说描写了二十世纪初的社会变革。

zhè běn xiǎo​shuō miáo​xiě le èr​shí shì​jì chū de shè​huì biàn​gé.

This novel describes the social changes at the beginning of the twentieth century.

first time word
an ordinal prefix used primarily for the first ten days of a lunar month

每年正月初一，家里人都会聚在一起吃团圆饭。

měi nián Zhēng​yuè chū yī, jiā​lǐ​rén dōu huì jù zài yī​qǐ chī tuán​yuán​fàn.

Every year on the first day of the first lunar month, the family gathers for a reunion dinner.

junior directional
pertaining to a basic or elementary level of education, skill, or ranking

这套教材的内容按照由初到深的顺序排列。

zhè tào jiào​cái de nèi​róng àn​zhào yóu chū dào shēn de shùn​xù pái​liè.

The content of this textbook is arranged in order from elementary to advanced.

Frequency
Character
Written text
667th most common 302.8 per million
Movie subtitles
1,136th most common 79.8 per million appears in 36% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
25.7 per million appears in 8% of films
Written text
123.6 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 5
HSK 3.0
Level 3
Strokes
7
Unicode
U+521D

Sources
Definitions
CC-CEDICT
Frequency data
MTSU Chinese text computingSUBTLEX-CHBCC Corpus (BLCU)