BEIJING — What if “womanwomanwoman” were the English word for rape, defilement, adultery?

That is roughly how the Chinese character “jian,” or 姦, translates, as it is made up of three characters for “woman,” 女.

(In mainland China, the character 姦 was simplified to 奸 after the 1949 Communist revolution as an aid to literacy, but the three-woman version is still standard in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and overseas Chinese communities, and widely recognized on the mainland.)

Troubled by the word’s gender associations, curators made it the symbol of an art exhibition that had been scheduled to open in Beijing on Nov. 25, the United Nations’ International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

The exhibition, “Jian, Rape: Gender Violence Cultural Codes,” was to have run until Dec. 10, Human Rights Day, signaling 16 days of global activism against gender violence with the hashtag #orangetheworld.