The Hanmoji Handbook is out in full force tonight at Another Story Bookshop (315 Roncesvalles Ave, Toronto, ON M6R 2M6), 7-8pm. Come by to learn more about the making of the book, play some fun hanmoji games and get your book signed by Jason, Jenny and An.
This is Hanmoji Puzzles, your weekly dose of emoji word puzzles inspired by The Hanmoji Handbook. And don’t worry — you don’t need to speak Chinese at all in order to play along. You just need a love for emoji and be curious about how language works!
🧩 This week’s puzzle
In issue 06, we talked about 口 (kǒu in Mandarin/hau2 in Cantonese), or the mouth 👄 radical. 🚶🏽+ 👄 stands for 人口, or “population.” Today, we want to talk about horses and doors for the opening party for The Hanmoji Handbook.
Can you guess what this means?
🚪🐎
On page 32 of The Hanmoji Handbook, we explain that “on a horse” (馬上 in Traditional Chinese and 马上 in Simplified Chinese) means “right away”, reflecting the fact that horses were the fastest mode of transit in the ancient world.
But a horse and a door?
⏳
⏳
⏳
🫢 Answer (spoilers ahead!)
🚪🐎 stands for 闖/闯 (chuǎng/cong2), which means charge.
In last week’s hanmoji, 人 (🚶🏽) and 口 (👄) were two separate characters that formed a single word, meaning “population.” In this week’s hanmoji, the word for horse (馬/马) and door (門/门), come together into a single character (闖/闯).
The image it creates is a striking one — literally! It looks like a horse galloping through the door, charging ahead. Like a superhero movie where the villain bursts through the walls, it’s an apt visual of what it means to charge or break through.
And with that, friends in Toronto, we’ll be charging through the doors at Another Story Bookshop tonight. See you there!
🥳 Updates from our parent project, The Hanmoji Handbook
Our Toronto in-person book launch is on tonight (September 16)! Come meet us at Another Story Bookshop. More details here.
We were recently interviewed by Ontario public broadcaster TVO.
Our book is now out! Order it now on IndieBound 🇺🇸, Shop Local 🇨🇦, Blackwell’s 🌏, Barnes & Noble 🇺🇸, or Indigo 🇨🇦.
Hanmoji Puzzles is a spin off of The Hanmoji Handbook: A Guide to Learning Chinese Through Emoji, which you should absolutely pre-order today 😗. This newsletter is a project by Jason Li, An Xiao Mina and Jennifer 8. Lee.