What do you think of beauty? What is beautiful for you?

If you could imagine, say, you were the very first human beings standing up straight on two legs and for the first time observing the primeval world, what would you think it’s beautiful among all the things you see?

The sky? The birds? The trees? The flowers?

For the English, for the Westerners, beauty is what is “good and fine”. The English word “beauty” comes from an old French word beaute which derives from the Latin word bellus that means “beautiful, fine”.

The Chinese though, have a very different way of thinking.

First, do we agree that life is difficult? Do we echo what Plato said thousands of years ago that “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” ?

Now think again! Those very first humans, standing awkwardly on their two newly erected legs in a brand new world; a world unknown to them; a world in which they have to forage and fight to meet their urgent wants.

So what would they think is beautiful when they are all hungry and cold?

The Chinese knows!

The Chinese word for beauty–美 mei3–explains it.

The upper part of the word means “sheep”, and the lower part means “big”.

So beauty for the Chinese is no more than a big fat sheep. Indeed when you are standing on your two just straightened-up legs shaking in the cold and hungry, what could be more beautiful than a big fat sheep that offers you food and gives you wool to protect you from cold?

It’s only when you are fed and warm, you have the mood to look at the woman sitting next to you gnawing the last bit of the lamb and thinking you are in your heart: This is another sort of beauty!

The word 好hao3, now means “good, healthy”, originally means “beautiful”, and what is beautiful?

The Chinese, of course, again knows!

A woman! For the character explains itself: 女子nü3zi means “a woman”, and it looks like this in the beginning: