Quick post to note something I finally understand that has always puzzled me about Chinese.

The term “chen mien” means _in front of_. As in the driver sits in the front of the car. The term “ho mien” means _in back of_, as in the yard is in back of the house.

The interesting thing is that the terms “chen” and “ho” are also used to qualify times. For example, “ho tien” means two days in the future, and “chen tien” means two days in the past. Something like _in two years_ is signified by “liang nian yi ho” where as _two years ago_ is “liang nian yi chen.” To be clear, the term for “in back of” is used to signify times in the future, whereas the term for “in front of” is used to signify times in the past.

I asked a Chinese friend about this and they responded by saying “well, when a thing is in front of us, we can see it. this is also the case with the past – we can see it clearly. When a thing is in back of us, it is out of our sight. this is also the case with the future – it is unseen and unknowable.” Interesting to me that my western-trained thinking would always put future events in the forward direction – or in front, and past events in the backwards direction – or in back.