Chinese Word Meanings: "I Seek"

Being from a place exactly 12 hours behind China's one time zone (Beijing Standard Time), I'm suffering from jet lag in the worst way. This said, despite being very productive, it was a long and tough day here in Shenzhen.

After work I went out for a stroll along the streets near my hotel to unwind.

Aside from seeing the many things for sale among the vendors that dot the length of most any street in China, I make it a habit to read the signs. This is partly an effort to keep sharp on reading Chinese, but also to see into the psychology - the mind set - behind the creation of certain written words or phrases.

"I SEEK"

On my walk I did come across two words which have a fascinating background. The two words are...

"I seek"

In Chinese history the words "I seek" are easily tied to the doctrine of Daoism (Taoism) and the classic story of the wanderer on his or her path, or the Dao. Read about the Dao by clicking here.

TWO WORDS - SIMILAR BUT NOT THE SAME

I remember when first learning to read Chinese, I mistook the two words "I seek" (see the accompanying picture) as the same words.

Indeed they almost look the same. And rightly so.

Upon looking them up in Wieger's Chinese Words, I saw that they were derived of the same components ("radicals" as they're called in Chinese), but were written in a way to depict a simple but amazing story that lends a dramatically living meaning to them.

A JUNGIAN CONNECTION

In the phrase "I seek", the "I" part (the word on top) is a rendition of two spears connected at the center. The second (bottom) word "seek" is also a depiction of two spears, but they are disconnected at the center.

FAUST, PSYCHOLOGY...

Why two spears? To this I answer this, I give you a favorite quotation from the great father of modern psychology:

"Two souls dwell, alas, in my breast

Each would from the other split..."

- Carl Gustav Jung, quoting from Goethe's Faust

Faust's words through Jung apply exactly to the two pictograms shown for "I seek".

THE WORD "I"

When a woman or man would have "two souls" battling within, by the very fact that these two parts (as with the yin and yang of Daoism) would live together in the same body - this means they are inextricably connected. While they may not necessarily be at peace, they are in some sense in communion.

This state of internal communion is represented by wo, the first word - the two spears are connected, and thus able to work together in some way.

THE WORD "SEEK"

What of war, strife and the heart-wrenching disconnection within the human psyche? For this we have the "disconnected spears" word, depicted at the bottom by the Chinese word zhao.

The two spears, disjointed at the center, may indeed be battling each other, or may be performing two separate functions within the human psyche, in turn representing the dual-sided "seeking" ( a la Jekyll and Hyde) the soul partakes on its journey within the Dao.

SEPARATE YET UNITED

The ancient Romans and Greeks said, "We fought with the enemy" - as opposed to modern English, wherein we say, "We fought against the enemy." When at war, the two halves of "seek" may be seen as two embattled foes, separated by an ideology, yet inextricably engaged in an abstract form of intimacy that could only be comprehended in the world of dream and legend, the wellspring from which our pictographic spears arose.

When at peace, together the two words comprised one sentence. Separate, yet united - as with yin and yang - a perfect and wholly functional contradiction.

Thus we have two significantly meaningful words, both from a psychological and pictographic perspective.

- John

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