Fans of Chinese and Mandarin
A single Chinese symbol can mean “to hit,” “to fetch,” “to play,” or “a dozen.” How do seven-year-olds memorize dozens of definitions for one character? They don’t. The secret lies in how the language is structured and taught. Modern Chinese is overwhelmingly a language of compound words, not isolated characters. In school, students are rarely … Read more
One very important concept captured by a Chinese character is “ren” or 忍。 This is a very interesting character: it carries the concept of a knife or 刀 held over the heart or 心。Naturally, having a knife held over your heart would be a very uncomfortable situation to say the least. But the character “ren” … Read more
The original meaning of this character is “respect.” However, this meaning is rarely used today. Nowadays, it’s mainly used for recording time and divination. “寅” is the third zodiac sign in the order of the Earthly Branches. The twelve earthly branches are：子、丑、寅、卯、辰、巳、午、未、申、酉、戌、亥。 “寅” represents 3:00 AM to 5:00 AM; “寅” represents the northeast-east direction; “寅月” … Read more
I must answer this question because the calligraphy work I’ve been recently copying is the 峄山碑，Yi Mountain Stele, which features the standard official script of the Qin Dynasty. Among them, the character “世” (shì) is not very easy to write. This is how “世” is written in the original inscription of the Yi Mountain Stele. … Read more
Because it is a fire related one, in China, this explanation is widely accepted. And if you search it on Google, you’ll likely find that it is associated with “the colour produced by fire”, “chimney”, etc. However, there are indeed other theories. For example, in one of the answers to this question, a gentleman provided … Read more