The character 看 (kān): to look

A Chinese water town: a green blue canal runs to a humpbacked stone bridge, lined with whitewashed houses under dark tiles, balconies and orange lanterns, willows leaning over the water. On the left quay a terracotta orange figure holds a flat hand above the eyes and gazes down the canal. On the same quay at the right stands the character 看 in near black: three almost level lines stacked and crossed by a long stroke sweeping down to the left, an upright frame of three cells beneath their right half.
Pronunciation
kān
Strokes
9
Level
HSK5
Radical
目

What it means

to look after; to take care of; to watch; to guard

Where its shape comes from

Xu Shen needs five words for it: to look, from 手, with 目 beneath. A hand held above the eye, the one we still raise as a visor to see into the distance without being dazzled, and the gesture has not changed. Both elements belong to characters already studied, 手 and 目; it is the hand that altered its shape on climbing above the eye.

Source: Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE); the Chinese University of Hong Kong character database.

How it used to be written

Forms, sources and dates: the 字形演變 database of 小學堂, Academia Sinica, public domain (CC0).

A way to remember it

The 目 of entry twenty-five, and above it the hand of entry twenty-one, lying flat. In 手 the upright runs down and finishes with a hook to the left; here it gives way to a long slanting stroke that crosses all three bars and travels far down to the left.

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

Words it appears in

See the 27 HSK words built on 看, grouped by level.

Writing it

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

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