Friendship and love

“Friend” is 朋友 péngyou, and each of the two characters has its own story. 友 yǒu shows, in the oldest inscriptions, two right hands turned the same way ⟶ two people helping each other. 朋 péng is more mysterious. Palaeographers see in it two strings of shells, the ancient currency, whereas the first Chinese dictionary, at the beginning of the 2nd century, made it a phoenix followed by thousands of birds. I lean towards the shells (two strings hanging side by side are already a picture of friendship), but without certainty. The ancient commentators, in fact, distinguished between the two words: 同门曰朋，同志曰友, “those who have the same master are 朋, those who have the same aspiration are 友”. This is what explains Couvreur's translation on the page Chapter 1 of the Analects of Confucius: the friends who come from afar are “friends of wisdom” there, in other words disciples.

爱 ài, “to love”, has caused a great deal of ink to flow since the characters were simplified. The traditional form 愛 has a heart, 心, in its middle; the simplified form has lost it, and in its place we find 友, the friend. Hence the joke that has been going round for decades: in mainland China, people love without a heart, but among friends. Mind you, it is only a game: the 友 in 爱 has nothing to do with friendship, it is an abbreviation that comes from cursive script. The feeling of love is 爱情 àiqíng, the relationship 恋爱 liàn’ài, and this relationship is something you “talk”: 谈恋爱 tán liàn’ài, literally “to talk love” ⟶ to go out together. In Chinese, you don't fall in love: you talk about it.

People rarely say 我爱你 wǒ ài nǐ. Many parents have never said it to their children, and plenty of couples prefer 我喜欢你, “I like you”, or nothing at all: affection shows through gestures, a peeled piece of fruit, a question about whether you have eaten. On the other hand, the internet generation has found a way round it. They write 520, 五二零 wǔ èr líng, which sounds almost like 我爱你, and 20 May has become a second Valentine's Day, with flowers and symbolic bank transfers of 520 yuan. 情人节 Qíngrénjié is also celebrated on 14 February, just as in the West. The truly Chinese festival falls on the seventh evening of the seventh lunar month: it is 七夕 Qīxī, the festival of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, to which we devote the page The Chinese Valentine's Day.

When it comes to meeting, Chinese has two words that English renders poorly. 一见钟情 yí jiàn zhōng qíng, love at first sight, literally says “at a single glance, to gather one's feelings” (钟 here has the sense of “to concentrate”). 缘分 yuánfèn is harder. The word comes from Buddhism, where 缘 refers to the conditions that make things happen: it is the bond, tied long before us, that makes two people meet. You say 有缘 when you run into each other three times in the same week, and 没有缘分 when a relationship doesn't work out, without anyone being at fault. “Fate” is too heavy, “chance” too light. I haven't found anything better than keeping the Chinese word.

Jealousy, for its part, has a taste: that of vinegar. 吃醋 chīcù, “to eat vinegar”, already met on the page The five senses, is said to go back to the Tang. Emperor Taizong wanted to give a concubine to his minister 房玄龄 Fáng Xuánlíng; the minister's wife refused, and the emperor made her choose between the concubine and a cup of poison. She drank it in one go. It was vinegar. It is a fine story, too fine no doubt to be true, but it has left us 醋坛子 cùtánzi, “the vinegar jar”, for incurably jealous people.

On the friendship side, the words have multiplied. Among girls, you have your 闺蜜 guīmì: 闺, the women's quarters in the old house, and 蜜, honey, which has taken the place of 密 “intimate”, pronounced the same way. In the Northeast, boys call each other 老铁 lǎotiě, “old iron” ⟶ a friend as solid as iron (the word went all round China with live-streaming videos, where hosts greet their viewers this way). The classics, for their part, were wary of friendships that were too warm. Zhuangzi wrote: 君子之交淡若水，小人之交甘若醴, the friendship of the wise is as bland as water, that of petty men as cloying as sweet wine. Usage has turned it into 君子之交淡如水 and forgotten the second half. A pity, since it is what explains the first.

Internet slang has a lot of fun with single people. A single person calls himself a 单身狗 dānshēngǒu, a “single dog”; when a couple shows off, it 撒狗粮 sǎ gǒuliáng, it “throws dog food” to the dogs in question. And whoever stays sitting between two lovers becomes a 电灯泡 diàndēngpào, a light bulb: he gives off light, and nobody asked him for anything. Curiously, French chose the same image with “tenir la chandelle” (“to hold the candle”); English makes do with a third wheel. A coincidence, no doubt.

The most beautiful line on absence, however, comes from the 诗经 Shījīng, the Book of Songs. A song there says, in three stanzas: a day without seeing you is like three months; like three autumns; like three years. The proverb 一日不见，如隔三秋 yí rì bú jiàn, rú gé sān qiū has kept only the autumns. But how long are three autumns? The commentators do not agree: three years for some, nine months for others, since a season lasts three months. I won't decide. The lover who is waiting, at any rate, knows that it is a long time.

This page opens the “Relationships” subcategory. Marriage, weddings and divorce are on the page Couples and children. Neighbours, politeness, invitations, the famous 关系 guānxi and quarrels will have their own page. It will be the next one.

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.