Amazing Chinese Characters (429) Factory or Plant - 厂 (廠）

 The bronze script of character Factory or Plant is

Which is a cliff and the flat ground in front of the cliff, nothing to do with factory or plant in 3000+ years. By the way, Chinese doesn't distinguish Factory from Plant, they share the same character.

The big seal script of the character is

Very similar to bronze script.

The small seal script of the character is

Similar to older scripts. At this time (~ 2200+ years ago), the character might have started to mean the place where people made products for sale. 

The clerical script of the character is

The top is character Broad (Post 316), the bottom is character Open, both mean Big Field, Open Flat. The character is an ideogram.

The song typeface of the character is

厂

Same as the clerical script.

There is another character which original means "A big space for practicing fight with wood weapons". Because it mistakenly has a 厂 radical. It was merged into 厂 in simplification in 1950s, and abolished in simplified characters. 

The song typeface of the character which is called traditional character is

廠

Which means Factory or Plant, same as 厂.  Because its original meaning had not been used long time ago, so it is not important for us to know its original meaning and evolution. I may discuss it in later time.

Its Pinyin is Chang3.