Tag: chinese culture

Magic it up

Published on by Zhi-Juan Guo

—-How Chinese Characters were created? Part Two

It all started with drawing. But there is only so much you could draw. Pretty soon, the Chinese man realized that he has to come up with other ways to make characters.

The first idea is easy enough: signs. Human knows how to use sign language long before they know how to speak, let alone to know the complicated system of written language. So when you point up it means up, and when you point down it means down.

So it’s not hard to tell it means “up”.
As it’s easy to tell this one means “down”.

But even with this brilliant idea, the Chinese man sees that there are still an awful amount of characters he needs to create.

He thinks. He muses. He sighs. At last he sees before him, a man is putting a hand above his eyes, and even unconsciously, he looks at what that man is looking at, as if the man himself has told him “look!”

“Ah!” He thinks aloud. “I already have the character for ‘hand’ the character for ‘eyes’. If I put the hand above the eyes…..”

Do you still remember the symbol for “hand”?

How about the drawing for “eyes”?

The arrows point out how it evolves.

So what about putting a hand above your eyes?

What are you looking for? Yes. That’s the character for “look”.

So with this method, he managed to make many more characters:

He sees one man at the heels of another man.

“That means ‘follow’.” he says to himself.

He sees the sun and he sees the full moon.

“One illuminates the day, the other the night. They are both bright.” He again muses to himself.

And a person waving his arms, with one foot on the ground, the other striding out means “walk”.

There is something joyful and vibrating in the character. For one could tell the walking man is cheerful.

The close relationship between the Chinese and agriculture also shows in the characters, as words like “ox”, “goat” “pig” were the first created characters. So the concept that “the man begs food from the earth” was illustrated even in characters. As an inland country with a vast continent, the Chinese were not, roughly speaking, an ultra adventurous race: there was always land enough to plough and it never was worth one’s while to go to the sea and very likely get drowned. Even the word “water” is unlike the English word which shares the same root from “wave” of the sea. In Chinese the word “water”, instead of sea water, is from the river, and it flows with amazing tranquility and elegance.

Let’s Dance

Published on by Zhi-Juan Guo

Every morning, if the weather permits, in the park there are, sometimes one, sometimes two or three groups of middle-aged Chinese women dancing, it’s not a very inspiring scene for me: the music is almost always sugary, and their moves, to say the least, amateur. (What drew me to New York was the Broadway dancing I encountered in a summer in Bryant Park years ago, and that’s something excites and amazes me still: the bold confidence to claim your stage in the world.)

And yet, there is a plain honesty in the groups of women in the park: they gather together from all walks of life, one might be a waitress works hard work to bring on the table the plate of food you ordered, another stands behind a counter in a 99 cents store for many hours a day……yes, there is a slovenliness in their appearance: they could hardly afford to be otherwise, still, they come and they dance, in the mid of the hard struggle of life, dancing to the sugary music about love.

And isn’t it always nice to see a group of women dancing in the park? It says an attitude toward life.

There is a Chinese idiom: 手舞足蹈 shǒu wǔ zú dǎo which, if literally translated, means hands waving feet jumping, it describes a person, when encounters extreme excitement or happiness, couldn’t not help himself but dancing: does it remind you of how children act when they are given unexpected presents, a puppy for instance?

Say, in the very beginning, nature’s hostility–“the heat of the sun, the furious winter’s rage”–must be a lot more fearful for the unequipped and vulnerable human race. Hard work it must be to get food for your belly. Imagine that you are always on the go, moving from one place to another in search of food, you could hunt, fruitlessly, for days. Then all of sudden, out the arrow shot, down fell the bull. What extreme happiness must that be? Could you picture that hunter “hands waving feet jumping”？

In Chinese culture too, the word dance 舞 wǔ, comes from sacrifice, a ritual slaughter. The Chinese too, after shooting down the bull, could not believe that it’s his own strength that did it. It must be the scary and all mighty one who lives up in the sky, he says to himself, who can throw thunder and raise winds if he is angry. To pacify the mighty one’s anger and gain his favor, human offers Him the meat of the bull, and with its long tail, human dances a joyful dance for the one watches from the sky.

This woman here with two bull tails in hands stretches out her arms and moves her feet which becomes the first symbol for dancing: the image on the right side.

For a time it went to a variation of feathering dancing: when you decorate your head with feathers. Indeed, the dancing women in the park illustrate this feature by, sometimes, waving very colorful fans.

The upper part is the feathers, and the lower part the feet.

Then it again went back to its origin–a person, arms stretching out, holds bull tails in both hands:

The upper part is the person holding, now more elaborated, tails, the lower part is the two feet going to opposite directions: to imply that he does not walk but dances.

This is the character we use today:

The person is simplified into the two strokes on the top, the tails becomes the sticks-looking thing in the middle, and the feet on the lower part, through your one foot looks very much like the other, now are two very different symbols that means two feet go opposite directions.

I would like to think that the first Chinese man, at finally shooting down the bull, with the thought that his food, his immediate want now is secured and could be satisfied, could not, in his extreme happiness, resist waving his hands and jumping his feet, has something very similar with the women dancing in the park: they both celebrate life.