里

裏/裡

lǐ

HSK 2.0 1

HSK 3.0 1

Rank #50

Definitions

lǐ (noun) inside; interior

lǐ (noun) Chinese mile (measure of length, approx. 500m)

lǐ (noun) neighborhood; administrative district

Etymology

A village (里) is an area of land (土) where people have fields (田). In simplified Chinese 里 is also used to mean "inside", while in traditional Chinese this meaning is written with a separate character 裡.

About

The character 里, formed from the components 田 (field) and 土 (earth) to conceptually represent managed land, originally signified a village or a linear measure called a li. Over time, through phonetic borrowing, it adopted the additional meaning of "inside" or "interior", a sense historically associated with the character 裏, which itself combines 衣 (clothing) with 里 as a phonetic element. This dual function allowed 里 to expand its semantic reach from concrete geographical and spatial references to more abstract indications of internal qualities or inherent aspects, with its applications broadening in both literary and everyday contexts while its structural composition remained unchanged.