The character 中 (zhōng): middle

An archery ground on green lawn in front of a red and gold Chinese pavilion, under a golden sky. On the left, resting on a wooden trestle, a large round straw target with cream and yellow rings and a red centre, an arrow with red fletching planted in the red. On the right, on the grass, the character 中 in very dark brown: an empty rectangle run through the middle by an upright stem that projects above and below it.
Pronunciation
zhōng
Strokes
4
Level
HSK3
Radical
丨
Made of
口丨

What it means

within; among; in; middle; center; while (doing sth); during; (dialect) OK; all right

Where its shape comes from

Xu Shen glosses it as "the inside" and takes it apart into an enclosure and a stroke that "passes through from top to bottom". The oracle bones show more: an upright pole planted in the ground with streamers flying on either side, a rallying banner raised in the middle of the camp, and the sense of centre follows from that gathering point. The streamers dropped out of the regularised form; the pole and the enclosure stayed. The arrow struck in a target appears in no early source.

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 rectangle of 口, learned earlier, with a shaft planted straight through the middle of it. It sticks out ABOVE AND BELOW, and that overshoot is what makes the character: stopped at the edges of the frame, it would leave you nothing but a crossed box.

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

Words it appears in

See the 46 HSK words built on 中, grouped by level.

Writing it

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

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