Sunday, 15 May 2016

Chinese Last Names and Interesting Chinese Words

Most common Chinese last names according to my textbook:

李 (Lǐ)
陈 (chén)
周 (zhōu)
胡 (hú)
何 (hé)
王 (wáng)
杨 (yáng)
吴 (wú)
朱 (zhū)
郭 (guō)
张 (zhāng)
赵 (zhào)
徐 (xú)
高 (gāo)
马 (mǎ)
刘 (liú)
黄 (huáng)
孙 (sūn)
林 (lín)
罗 (luō)


I also discovered something cool in my textbook:

The Chinese word for look (看) = Holding a hand (手) over your eyes (目) to gaze at something (for example, to cover the light shining in your eyes).

[The 'hooked' vertical part of 手 is written crookedly when written in another character]



Additionally:

亡 (Wáng) is the  Chinese character for 'to die'

The character for busy is 忙 (Máng)

This character for busy is formed with two parts...the part on the left is actually one of the short form characters for 'heart' (心。。written like 小 when in a character)

And the right part is 'to die'

So busy arguably means 'the heart is dying'.

Or as my father put it, you have to be alive for your heart to be capable of 'dying' - therefore only dead people are not busy. Ie. All people who are alive will be busy.

Therefore: Being busy is unavoidable while we are alive - - -

Is this some ancient wisdom passed down from the Chinese people?

Andre Lim

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