Conceptual Metaphors in Chinese

Personalities are temperature. In Chinese, many phrases that describe a person’s personality contain words like 热, 冷, 温暖 which means hot, cold, and warm respectively. Those phrases may mean passionate, accommodating, indifferent or cold-blooded. The hotter the temperature, the more enthusiastic the person is, and vice versa. It is very similar to that in English since people use words like warm-hearted or cold to describe others.

Relationships are buildings. People build relationships and they also break up. Being in a relationship is like a procedure to build a building, while separating apart is like breaking down the building. Love is a commodity. When two people are in a relationship, they treat their love as a goods that needs to be managed. Manage is the word Chineses use in relationships instead of maintain. Similar to a businessman manages his goods in order to maintain its value, two people in the relationship are both responsible to be faithful and considerate to each other. They do their best to keep their relationship instead of just blowing it up.

In Chinese culture, if two people become a couple, it means that they are really in love with each other. They appreciate their love and their relationship.

 


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