The character 云 (yún): cloud

A pale blue sky rises above steep Chinese mountains veiled in mist, with a red pavilion under tiered upturned roofs perched on a wooded crag at the lower left. On the left a huge cumulus billows upward in white and pale lilac, lit from behind. On the right, in the open sky, the character 云 in dark brown: a short bar, a longer bar beneath it, and below them a stroke that drops to the left, turns and runs back to the right, with a short diagonal in its hollow.

Pronunciation: yún
Strokes: 4
Level: HSK 4
Radical: 二
Made of: 二厶

What it means

cloud; CL:朵[duo3]

Where its shape comes from

The graph draws a curl of rising vapour coiling back on itself: the two strokes at the top stand for the sky, and the loop below them is the cloud. This is both the oldest form and the shortest one. When 云 was borrowed to write the verb "to say", 雨 (yǔ), rain, was set above it so that the cloud could still be told apart, producing 雲; the 1956 simplification tables went back to the short form. Today's character is therefore the older of the two as well.

Source: Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE), which gives 云 as the ancient form of 雲; the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme (1956); the Chinese University of Hong Kong character database.

A way to remember it

Two bars for the sky, and underneath them a loop that sets off leftwards, turns, comes back to the right, with a dot resting in its hollow. That loop is ONE single stroke, and it is exactly where the hand hesitates.

This is a memory aid, not the origin of the character.

Words it appears in

云南 yún nán see 雲南省|云南省[Yun2nan2 Sheng3]
风云 fēng yún weather; unstable situation
白云 bái yún white cloud
云集 yún jí to gather (in a crowd); to converge; to swarm
乌云 wū yún black cloud
连云港 lián yún gǎng see 連雲港市|连云港市[Lian2yun2gang3 Shi4]

Writing it

See the stroke order of 云, animated stroke by stroke.