U+7136 "然" CJK Unified Ideograph-# Unicode Character
U+7136 "然" CJK Unified Ideograph-# is a Chinese character that fundamentally conveys the meaning of "so," "thus," or "like this," and it also commonly appears as a suffix for adjectives and adverbs, as in "自然" (zìrán, meaning "nature" or "naturally") or "突然" (tūrán, meaning "suddenly"). Its composition combines the radical for fire (灬, a variant of 火) under the element "肙," which together originally signified something burning or being consumed, but the character evolved to express a sense of confirmation or state of being. In classical and modern written Chinese, "然" functions both as a standalone word and as a grammatical particle, appearing frequently in philosophical texts, such as the Dao De Jing, and in everyday vocabulary across Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing systems.