The shell radical 貝

Read bèi, 7 strokes. Written 贝 as a component in modern simplified characters. It indexes 45 distinct HSK characters.

45HSK characters

7Strokes

#154Radical number

贝Written form

Quick answer

What does the shell radical (貝) mean, and which characters use it?

Shell (貝, bèi) is Kangxi radical 154, and it usually marks a character whose meaning is connected to shell. 45 distinct HSK characters are filed under it, the most common being 费, 质, 资. When you meet a new character carrying 贝, expect its sense to touch shell and let the other component hint at the sound.

How this radical works inside a character

Most characters built on 貝 follow the meaning-plus-sound pattern: 貝 sits on one side to signal the shell sense, and a second component supplies the approximate pronunciation. So you are rarely memorizing a whole new shape, you are recognizing shell plus a part you may already read. The list below is in corpus-frequency order, so the characters you will actually meet first are at the top: learn them in this order and the rest of the shell-radical family gets easier as you go.

All 45 shell characters 45 characters

#	Char	Pīnyīn	Strokes	HSK 3.0	HSK 2.0
1	费	fèi	9	3	4
2	质	zhì	8	4	4
3	资	zī	10	3	4
4	负	fù	6	3	4
5	赛	sài	14	3	3
6	贵	guì	9	1	2
7	赞	zàn	16	4	5
8	责	zé	8	3	4
9	财	cái	7	4	5
10	货	huò	8	4	4
11	贴	tiē	9	4	5
12	购	gòu	8	4	4
13	赏	shǎng	12	4	5
14	账	zhàng	8	6	5
15	败	bài	8	4	4
16	贺	hè	9	5	4
17	贯	guàn	8	6	6
18	赖	lài	13	6	6
19	赢	yíng	17	3	4
20	赔	péi	12	5	5
21	贫	pín	8	6	6
22	贪	tān	8	7-9	6
23	贸	mào	9	5	5
24	赠	zèng	16	5	6
25	贩	fàn	8	7-9	6
26	贬	biǎn	8	7-9	6
27	赐	cì	12	7-9	·
28	贝	bèi	4	4	5
29	贷	dài	9	5	5
30	赌	dǔ	12	6	6
31	赚	zhuàn	14	6	4
32	贤	xián	8	7-9	6
33	贿	huì	10	7-9	6
34	赋	fù	12	7-9	6
35	贡	gòng	7	6	5
36	贞	zhēn	6	7-9	·
37	贮	zhù	8	7-9	·
38	贱	jiàn	9	7-9	·
39	贼	zéi	10	7-9	6
40	贾	jiǎ	10	7-9	·
41	赁	lìn	10	7-9	6
42	赂	lù	10	7-9	6
43	赃	zāng	10	7-9	·
44	赎	shú	12	7-9	·
45	赡	shàn	17	7-9	·

tone 1 tone 2 tone 3 tone 4 neutral Order = corpus frequency, most common first · · = not in that scheme

Strokes and radical assignment come from the Unicode Han Database (Unicode 17.0.0, field kRSUnicode); the HSK levels and the frequency order are computed from the shipped HSK word lists. A small number of characters have a contested radical across dictionaries; the primary Unicode analysis is used throughout. Last verified 2026-07-24. See the full radical explorer or the characters-per-level reference.

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Drill the shell-radical characters on a schedule

This list is free to browse and self-test here, always. If you would rather practice recognizing these characters on your phone with spaced repetition, we recommend Wordbrush, our one disclosed pick. Never a gate on this page.

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