Tag: chinese language

It’s About Love

Published on by Zhi-Juan Guo

“It is privacy.”

To my question “What is love?”, answered me a seven-year-old girl in a calm and matter-of-fact manner as if I just asked her what her favorite color is.

That’s in a way related to the origins of the English word “love”.

“Love” comes from an old English word lufu; also from a root lubhyati “desire’, Latin ibet ‘it is pleasing’, libido ‘desire’, also by leave ‘permission’ and lief ‘dear, pleasant’.

So there is a lot to say about love.

First it is a desire, and this word desire too has an interesting origin.

Imagine in the beginning of human history where there were barely any man-made things around you: no buildings of any sort, no roads, no cars, no…..basically most of the things come into your sight when you walk down on a street in modern times.

So when you are out in the open on a clear, cool autumn night sitting in front of a nice campfire, what do you see when you look up?

Yes. Millions of stars!

It must have inspired the human heart in the same way since that very first humans looked up. There is even the same phrase both in English and in Chinese “reach for the stars”–伸手摘星 shen1shou3zhai1xing1.

“Wonder of wonders” thinking in the heart of the first Homo sapiens. “What are they? Bright and blinking?” And the longer he looks at them, the more mysterious, the brighter they appear. Unconsciously, he reaches out his hand: “down the stars!—I de-sire!”

And that’s–possibly–how the word “desire” comes from: de-‘down’ + sidus, sider-“star”. (And considering that with no books, no TV, no phone, no computer, the first humans must have spent a considerable amount of time on looking at the stars, for the word “consider” examine, is also based on sider, stars. Indeed, an awful lot of things they have figured out by examining the stars.)

Do not little children, puppies, or the first flowers, the first softest greens in spring time inspire some warm, glad, tender feelings in you? For “it is pleasing”, and the Romans, the Latin-spoken people call this feeling ibet, love.

Now when the seven-year-old girl answered me what she thought was love for her, she hit on the sense that it is a permission.

It is a permission, it is an invitation, it is a trust. So now I open my door to you, I show you my most private, my most vulnerable self. I could cry and I could laugh and I am in my most comfortable skin for I am with the person that loves me and I love.

The Chinese word 爱 ai4–after a whole morning’s search and think and consider–it still puzzles me.

The upper part means hand–I would like to think it implies touching, caressing, the lower part means friend.

But this word is simplified only not very long ago–given the long history of how language evolves–from the traditional version:

The difference is there is a “heart” in the middle in this version, and the lower part is no longer “friend” but it means ‘two unstable legs”: staggering: the lover now deep in his longings eats without tasting his food, and staggers–instead of walks–around as if lost: Does it echo Plato’s saying that “love is a serious mental disease”？

And it all comes from a guy who staggers around longing to show his heart to his lover:

The staggering legs and the heart still show in the traditional version of this character that is in use till this day.

With time it evolves into this:

The heart and the shaking legs are still there!

So I would like to think that the westerners and the Chinese agree on this: love is the tender, warm, glad feeling in your heart. Love is what we long for and what we desire for what we think is dear and pleasant. Love is a permission for you to enter my heart–and carefully should you tread, for you tread on my heart!

Yet love also could stagger as everyone of us must have or will have our own experience!

Let’s Talk About Beauty

Published on by Zhi-Juan Guo

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:

And yes, the woman, of course, like Madonna, is caring for a child: the left part is the woman and the right part the child.