Culture and Wisdom of Ancient Chinese People

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Culture and Wisdom of Ancient Chinese People As
you may know, the Chinese language is not
phonetic but ideographic (it is one of very few
non-phonetic languages being used now). It has
hundreds of thousands of characters each of which
carries at least one specific meaning. Some
characters are quite simple in their shape and
structure, whereas many others are more complex.
However, many of those complex characters are
actually combinations of more basic ones. In
other words, they are compound characters. Natura
lly, as human culture and wisdom progressed over
time, the Chinese people had to invent more and
more compound characters. The question is how to
combine some of the basic characters into new
compound characters to mean something more
complex and sophisticated. However, since each
character (whether simple or complex) contains a
specific meaning, you may want to consider the
meanings of those characters being combined
anyway. This is where culture and wisdom come
into play. So, as we understand how some of the
old Chinese characters were fabricated, we can
sense the culture and wisdom of the ancient
Chinese people. Here are some simple examples
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ìé This character (one short horizontal bar)
means, quite understandably, one. ìÑ This
two-stroke character means a person. It also
means human beings or human race. It is not
clear exactly how this character was created but
most probably its original form figuratively
depicted a persons body. However, there is a
theory - With the two strokes relying on one
another to stand or balance, this character
implies the mutual reliance nature of humans or
human society. ÓÞ As simple as it might appear,
this is in fact a compound character. If you
combine the first two characters above in a
certain, rather obvious way, you get this
character (Yes, you can try this at home). But
not so obvious is its meaning. When you combine
a character (ìé) meaning one with another (ìÑ)
meaning person, what meaning the resultant
character will have? The answer big,
large, or great. Reason? Well, we can only
guess. Perhaps, those ancient Chinese people
knew that one person was already big, large, or
great physically, mentally, spiritually,
intellectually, or otherwise!
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ô This is a combination (again a pretty
obvious one) of ìé (one) and ÓÞ(big). Guess
what the meaning of this character is. Ask
yourself, If there was indeed one big thing
in this whole universe, what could that
be? Üý This is the fun part. This character
is almost the same as the previous one, but
notice this one is little taller (higher) than
the previous (the left stroke of ? sticks
through the top of (ô ). Here, you want to ask
yourself, If there was indeed one thing that is
even bigger/taller than the one big thing (ô )
above, what could that be? Believe it or not,
it means _________. And then, a naturally
arising question is