How to read it?

Ba, Chinese character, pronounced Xi×, can be interpreted as a wooden cage for closing animals or imprisoning and escorting them.

Refers to something similar to a cage that is usually used to keep wild animals, and also refers to a cage or prison car that transports prisoners. The ancient "box" was an instrument for collecting things.

(ancient pictograph: from the wood, a sound. A wooden cage for animals, such as doors, thresholds, hidden tigers. Quoted from the Pre-Qin Confucius and his disciples "Ji Jia Jiang Chuan": Who will be destroyed by the jade turtle when the tiger rises? Tigers and rhinos ran out of cages, and tortoise shells (for divination) and jade (for sacrifice) were destroyed in boxes. Whose fault can this be? "