01.14.07
Future - Behind, Past - In Front
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.
Julie said,
January 22, 2007 at 2:41 am
I had to read through this entry twice before I really understood what you were saying, but, now, I get it. Strangely, it makes sense. Whatever is before you in your “mind” is in front of you. It makes more sense then–the words of Paul in Hebrews 12:1 (not to sound too Christianese here), that we have to throw off everything that hinders us and lay it aside so that we fix our eyes on what actually is set before us. The past is so hard to throw off sometimes, I think. I forget that I am a new creation. Paul wasn’t a Westerner. Neither was Jesus. Funny, that. Hugs to all of you!
hansr said,
January 26, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Yeah, I suppose - our sense of future/forward, past/behind could be a Judeo-Christian concept vs. a “Western” concept. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how ancient our western culture really is. It has not progressed inside of one nation-state the way that China’s culture has, but has progressed (in some form or another) from ancient Greece (and perhaps even earlier) onwards.
I’m really not qualified to say that as I’ve not done my homework on the specifics, but is something I’ve been thinking about.