高兴 gāoxìng is the word for “glad” in Chinese. 高 means “tall” as you could see the character is one box on another to build up the meaning of “tallness”. 兴 “excitement” could be understood as, vividly, the hair standing up on one’s head as one gets excited.

One of the things we love about children, pets, and animals is that they cannot lie and they are very obvious and physical, they understand things in the simplest manner. The cat, whenever he comes close to rub his head against my hand, purrs. As someone who is new with cats, every time I hear his low groan—it’s like he is saying “I am so happy I am so happy I am so happy”—I feel vaguely flattered and enormously satisfied. It is nice to know that you have made some creature so happy merely by your presence, merely by touching it. It makes you so content in yourself.

The Chinese interprets “gladness” in a physical manner too: your person becomes tall and your hair rises up. Indeed, the body and the mind are one, and if we pay closer attention, it’s not necessary that this person says he is happy and that person says he is sad, because it’s all already written in their persons. Walking on a street in New York City, or for that matter, a street anywhere in the world, it’s so interesting to watch people as there are so many different kinds (and the city has something that brings out the best and the worst in a person, that it pushes one to a corner and makes one savage at times), so, it’s easy to see who are the happy ones and who are not.

开心 kāixīn, another word for “glad”, literally means “open heart”. Indeed, one’s heart is open at the moment of joyfulness.

幸福 xìngfú, happy, happiness, as in the sense that the object for all people is “happiness”, as in the sense of “the pursuit of happiness”. 幸 means “luck”, as we all would readily admit that “luck” plays a role in the affairs of this world. 福 which character you would most frequently encounter if you visited China during Chinese New Year, means “fortune, happiness”. On the left of this character is the radical for “pray, worship”, and on the right “one mouth has field” (a person that has land).

I remember, about a decade ago in Shanghai, the westerners, the Europeans used to express their open-mouthed astonishment at the, at that time popular, Chinese standard for ideal romantic partners. The man has to be “高，富，帅”, “tall, rich, handsome”; the woman “白，富，美”, “white( fair), rich, beautiful”.

“But what about love?” “What about the compatibility of personalities?” “What about, in short, looking into each other’s eye under a starry sky?”

They demanded.

Well, well, what can I answer? All in good time.

And, who can separate “happiness” from “fortune”? Pride and Prejudice tells us in its famous opening that Mr. Bingley is “a single man in possession of a good fortune”, and we are duly informed, indeed more than once, this or that gentleman has how many thousand a year. Jane and Elizabeth, we are sure, will not fall in love with their footmen; nor Bingley and Darcy with their kitchen maids: be they ever so tender and gentle and kind and equipped with all the good qualities in the world.

Even now, if we look around, if we look closely, is there much difference? Can we blame them? It is a truth we all know in our hearts that poverty is hideous, that happiness needs its foundation.

If only, every one of us is given equal opportunity to achieve it.