The cooking method {炒 (stir-frying)} is a commonly used verb in daily life, closely related to our existence. Its appearance in transmitted texts did not occur until the Han Dynasty. The term {炒} was historically represented by eight model of characters, though only six were actually used, each with numerous variant forms. During the Han Dynasty, {炒} was recorded using “𩱦” and “㷅”, with “𩱦” being the predominant choice. In the Six Dynasties period, “ ” remained the standard. After the emergence of “炒” and “煼”, both characters were widely adopted across subsequent dynasties, with “炒” becoming the conventional form, though it never fully supplanted “煼”. This trend was also interspersed with the use of simplified variants like “㷅” and “𩱦”. Investigating the historical graphic representation of {炒} holds significant importance for understanding the development of Chinese culinary techniques and interpreting related transmitted texts.

During the late Qing Dynasty, the translator of Jinshi Shibie transliterates names with foreign elements into multisyllabic Chinese words. Through this investigation, I found that the translator’s choice of Chinese characters to be used in the transliteration element was mainly based on Xiaoyun of Guangyun. The characters selected with the principles include those easy to write, easy to distinguish, commonly used, and used for systemization. The main reason for different usage of Chinese characters in element transliteration name was mainly the switch of homophones or variant characters.

Since China announced the “Chinese Character Simplification Scheme” in 1956, two sides of the straits have had different usage of Chinese characters, which is Traditional or Simplified. This situation has been there for 60 years and we have noticed that, although simplified characters make it easy to remember and write, some original concepts of the characters, such as Chinese culture or how the character was created, have been lost. As Chinese characters consist of “format”, “sound”, and “meaning”, which are closely connected with one another, simplified Chinese have made it inconsistent with the original Chinese characters as they have become simple lines and symbols. When people are learning Chinese, they are not able to understand the close relationship between the format and the meaning or the rich Chinese culture carried by the character. The research motive is from the trend in the survey of university students about their concepts of the usage of traditional and simplified characters. The research will further explain how the format and the meaning of ancient Chinese characters were closely connected.