It used to be a ritual in which humans kneel before the gods; now赛 (Sài) is all about challenging ourselves to be the best we can be. This character appears whenever there’s a contest: a football match (足球赛 Zúqiú sài), a cycling contest (自行车赛 Zìxíngchē sài), or a debate competition (辩论赛 Biànlùn sài).

赛is a pictophonetic character (形声字 Xíngshēng zì) consisting a pictographic element where the meaning resides and a phonetic element. The upper part is borrowed from塞 (Sāi, fill in) to represent its pronunciation. The lower part, 贝 (Bèi) stands for seashell. You might wonder what does that have anything to do its meaning? Judging from its seal scripts dates back to over 2,000 years ago, the lower part is actually two hands holding a piece of seashell—an object of great value for the inland ancients. In order to show respect to the gods, they offer to sacrifice their precious seashell. Therefore, the original meaning of 赛 is “sacrifice to gods”. In modern Chinese, this meaning is only preserved in a few words referring to rituals in which offerings of gratitude were give to gods, such as 祭赛 (Jì sài), 赛神 (Sài shén) and 赛社 (Sài shè).

Roughly 1,500 years ago in the Book of Wei (《魏书》Wèi shū, a historical writing recording the Northern Wei and Eastern Wei Dynasty from 386 to 550) we spotted the first case when 赛 means “contest”. Some suspect that such change of meaning derived from the fact that when families put on their sacrifices, such as geese or pigs, they tended to compare their sizes; the bigger the more sincere to the gods and higher in social economical status. Other traditional contests also include poem contest or 赛诗 (Sài shī) during the Dragon Boat Festival, and lantern contest or赛花灯 (Sài huādēng) during the Lantern Festival.

The words竞赛 (Jìngsài) or 比赛 (Bǐsài) means competition or match. The two characters, 竞 and 比 have interesting and similar origins that complete the meaning of 赛. Both of those characters appeared over 3,000 years ago on the oracle bones in the form of two people standing side by side (the traditional form for 竞 is 競). The difference is these people’s identity: in 比, the two is a couple, which originally means “close and intimate”. The concept of comparison and competition emerged later. For 竞, it’s a life or death situation from the beginning. The graph indicated that the people in竞 are wearing barnacles, meaning they are prisoners. Like in the Colosseum, it seems that the fights between prisoners were also a pastime for the Chinese ancients.

Nowadays, 赛 is mainly associated with sports competition. A race is 赛跑 (Sàipǎo), car race is 赛车 (Sàichē) and horse race is, by parity of reasoning, 赛马 (Sàimǎ). For competition related terms and phrases, you will never be wrong by throw in some more赛. Preliminary competition is 初赛 (Chūsài), quarter-final is 复赛 (Fùsài) and final is 决赛 (Juésài). A championship or tournament is 锦标赛 (Jǐnbiāosài), literally “a competition for brocade flag”, because grabbing the flag used to be the sign of winning for dragon boat races. The same prefix is true for venue, area and time: competition field is 赛场 (Sàichǎng), division is 赛区 (Sàiqū) and season is 赛季 (Sàijì).

Besides being the building blocks of a series of contest related words, 赛 alone can be used as a verb, meaning “equal” or even “outmatch”. For instance, 这里的风光赛江南。 (Zhèlǐ de fēngguāng sài jiāngnán)—the view here is better than the south of Yangtze River; or 这些姑娘干活儿赛过小伙子。(Zhèxiē gūniang gàn huó er sàiguò xiǎohuǒzi.)—these ladies got the job done betters than the men. If you are having an extremely good time, you can describe it as 赛神仙 (Sài shénxiān), merrier than the immortals. There’s also a case of smart translation worth mentioning: Subway, the American sandwich store picked 赛 as a part of their Chinese brand name 赛百味 (Sài bǎiwèi), which not only resembles its English pronunciation but means “better than all kinds of other flavors”.