Character and emotions

Character is called 性格 xìnggé. The first character is already a definition: 性 combines the heart, 忄 (this is 心 written standing up, so that it fits on the left), and 生 “to be born” ⟶ what is born with the heart, one's deepest nature. 格 adds “the frame, the form”. But in conversation you more often hear 脾气 píqi, literally “the breath of the spleen” ⟶ mood, temperament. Chinese medicine does indeed link each organ to an emotion: 怒伤肝，喜伤心，思伤脾，忧伤肺，恐伤肾, “anger harms the liver, joy the heart, brooding the spleen, sorrow the lungs, fear the kidneys”, says the 黄帝内经 Huángdì nèijīng (see our page Getting treatment). I am not certain that 脾气 comes straight from this theory; the dictionaries are rather vague on the point. On the other hand, the parallel with English is striking: our “humour” also comes from medicine, that of Hippocrates, and a melancholic was originally just a man with too much black bile.

Be careful: used on its own, 脾气 often leans towards a bad temper. 他脾气很大 tā píqi hěn dà does not mean “he has a strong character” in the admiring sense, but “he flies off the handle at the slightest thing”. 发脾气 fā píqi is “to let out the breath of the spleen” ⟶ to lose one's temper. To pay a compliment, you say 脾气好 píqi hǎo: he is good-tempered, he doesn't get angry.

The heart is everywhere in this vocabulary. Look at the words on this page: 忄 sits on the left of 情, 怕, 惊, 慌, 恼, 愤, and 心 underneath 感, 念, 愁, 怒, 恐. For classical Chinese thought, 心 is both the heart and the mind: you think with your heart (thought, memory and will are going to get a page of their own, by the way). Even 快 kuài, “fast”, carries the heart: its first meaning was “glad, satisfied”, which survives in 快乐 kuàilè. The everyday words built on 心 (心情, 关心, 放心, 小心) are already on the page The body.

To say you are happy, Chinese has four common words, and students readily mix them up. 高兴 gāoxìng reacts to an event: 认识你很高兴, “I'm pleased to meet you”. 开心 kāixīn, “to open the heart” ⟶ to have a good time, is more colloquial. 快乐 lives mostly in greetings: 生日快乐, 新年快乐. And 幸福 xìngfú refers to a lasting happiness, that of a family or a couple. So a student who announces 我很幸福 because he got his exercise right makes his teacher smile (it's a bit like replying “my life is complete” at the end of a test).

The scholarly ideal, for its part, is self-control. 喜怒哀乐 xǐ nù āi lè, “joy, anger, sorrow, pleasure”, covers the whole range of emotions, and the expression comes from the 中庸 Zhōngyōng: 喜怒哀乐之未发，谓之中, “as long as joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure have not been stirred, this is called the centre”. Of a man of worth, it was said that he let neither joy nor anger show on his face, 喜怒不形于色. Confucius likewise contrasts the gentleman, who is serene, with the petty man, forever eaten up by worry: 君子坦荡荡，小人长戚戚 (Analects VII, 35, which our page Chapter 7 of the Analects of Confucius translates as: “The wise man is calm, his heart is at ease; the vulgar man is always weighed down by cares”). This does not mean that the Chinese hide everything (watch a game of 麻将 májiàng on the evening of the New Year and you will soon think otherwise). But restraint remains a virtue, especially in front of an elder or a superior.

Proverbs about character are often images. 刀子嘴，豆腐心 dāozi zuǐ, dòufu xīn, “a mouth like a knife, a heart like tofu”, describes someone who speaks harshly but means no harm (in China, tofu is the very image of softness). 江山易改，本性难移, “rivers and mountains are easier to change than one's nature”, is our “a leopard cannot change its spots”. And 七上八下 qī shàng bā xià, “seven up, eight down”, is the punchline of a 歇后语 xiēhòuyǔ, one of those two-part sayings in which the second half gives the key: 十五个吊桶打水，七上八下, “fifteen buckets drawing water from the well: seven go up, eight go down”. The expression has kept only the punchline. The heart does what the buckets do.

Today's language invents too. 玻璃心 bōlixīn, “a heart of glass”, is said of someone who takes offence at the slightest thing. 靠谱 kàopǔ, usually explained as “leaning on the musical score” ⟶ reliable, has as its opposite 离谱 lípǔ, “straying from the score” ⟶ absurd, way off the mark. 情商 qíngshāng, emotional intelligence or EQ, is modelled on 智商 zhìshāng, IQ: 商 is the quotient of a division here. The first two are colloquial. Avoid them in a cover letter.

Finally, in everyday life, the feeling often fades out of the word. 情况 qíngkuàng, the situation, and 事情 shìqing, the thing, have kept 情 without any emotion at all. 恐怕 kǒngpà, literally “to dread, to be afraid”, has become a polite way of saying “probably”: 恐怕要下雨了, “I'm afraid it's going to rain”, exactly as in English. And 爱好 àihào, a hobby, puts together two verbs that both mean “to love” (the 好 is read hào here).

Click on any character on the page: its stroke order is shown stroke by stroke, with the arrow that gives the direction of the movement.