King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “mussels”

河蚌
hé bàng
mussels; bivalves grown in rivers and lakes

The closest CC-CEDICT match for mussels is 河蚌 (hé bàng), defined as: mussels; bivalves grown in rivers and lakes.

Before using these characters for a tattoo, check them with a native speaker. Dictionary words often have several meanings, and the right choice depends on context.

Characters and stroke order

河 hé
river, stream; the Yellow river
radical 85 ⽔ · 8 strokes
蚌 bàng
oysters, mussels; mother-of-pearl
radical 142 ⾍ · 10 strokes

Other Chinese words for “mussels”

WordPinyinMeaning
壳菜 (殼菜)qiào càimussels (as food)

Related words

Other words that share a character with 河蚌.

WordPinyinMeaning
河流hé liúriver; 条 (tiáo)
河道hé dàoriver course; river channel
运河 (運河)yùn hécanal
河谷hé gǔriver valley
河水hé shuǐriver water
河口hé kǒuestuary; the mouth of a river
蚌壳 (蚌殼)bàng kéclamshell
鹬蚌相争 (鷸蚌相爭)yù bàng xiāng zhēngabbr. for 鷸蚌相爭,漁翁得利|鹬蚌相争,渔翁得利[yu4 bang4 xiang1 zheng1 , yu2 weng1 de2 li4]

See also: Japanese symbol for “mussels”.

Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3); Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License (graphics.txt); LGPL-3.0-or-later (dictionary.txt)); wordfreq (CC BY-SA 4.0 (data)). Retrieved 2026-10-22.