挑
Symbols Life
challenge
戰
ㄊㄧㄠˇ ㄓㄢˋ tiǎo zhàn
Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.
Script
Characters
Same in both
Layout
Rubbing mode: white on black, as a stone rubbing. The download is unaffected.
Something difficult you take on deliberately, or a provocation to compete. Chinese uses one word for both.
Before you commit
Choose with careNeither character alone means challenge. 戰 means war and 挑 means to provoke or to pick, so splitting the word changes the message entirely.
JapaneseJapanese writes the same word as 挑戦 with a simplified second character. The traditional 戰 marks this version as Chinese.
At small sizesTwenty-five strokes over two characters, 戰 dense on both sides. Needs generous size to hold together.
Meaning
Challenge; to challenge, to take on something difficult.
The everyday word, covering a personal challenge and a challenge issued to a rival.
Other characters for “challenge”
What to do next
Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.
Related concepts