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The character 人 (rén): person

A paved Chinese lane runs between grey brick walls with dark tiled roofs and hanging red lanterns, under a golden sky. On the left, a flat terracotta orange silhouette of a man walks in profile across the flagstones, one leg forward and one behind. On the right, on the same paving and at the same height, the character 人 in very dark brown: one stroke falls from the top then curves down to the left, and a second leaves its side, a quarter lower, and runs down to the right.
Pronunciation
rén
Strokes
2
Level
HSK 1
Radical
人

What it means

person; people; CL:個|个[ge4],位[wei4]

Where its shape comes from

The oldest forms draw a single human being seen from the SIDE, standing upright, with one arm and one leg showing. Nothing is combined here: the graph simply pictures what it names, which makes it a pictogram. The reading one often meets, of two people leaning on one another, has no support anywhere in the early inscriptions, since only one figure was ever drawn.

Source: Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE), which glosses it as "depicting the shape of the arms and the legs"; the Chinese University of Hong Kong character database.

A way to remember it

Read the two strokes as a pair of legs seen from the side: the left one stays behind while the right one swings forward. What you are looking at is a walking step, and there is nothing else to draw here, least of all a head.

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

Words it appears in

Writing it

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

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