Really enjoyed this post. Thanks for sharing these reflections. I spent some years learning Chinese and living in China, and your observations about the logic of the language, especially around time, brought a lot back for me.
I wanted to add a note on the way Chinese handles the space-time metaphor, which absolutely blew my mind when I first encountered it. In English, we say "five years back" to mean five years ago. But in Chinese, "五年以后" (wǔ nián yǐ hòu), literally “five years behind,” refers to five years in the future. Conversely, "五年前" (wǔ nián yǐ qián), or “five years in front,” refers to five years in the past. I was so fascinated by this that I asked a number of people about it over the years.
I’ve come to believe there’s something meaningful, even philosophical, in this orientation. On one level, perhaps it reflects a civilizational posture toward history and tradition, with the past always visible, always “in front” of us. On another, maybe it’s simply a more accurate metaphor. After all, everything I perceive has already happened - even the light reaching my eyes. The past is what I can see, what is known and in view. The future, by contrast, is behind me: unseen, unknown, arriving silently from the rear.
A friend of mine once wrote a lyric that captures this beautifully: “We walk through life backwards, taking small steps on faith.” Chinese, I think, encodes that truth right into the way it tells time.
Really enjoyed this post. Thanks for sharing these reflections. I spent some years learning Chinese and living in China, and your observations about the logic of the language, especially around time, brought a lot back for me.
I wanted to add a note on the way Chinese handles the space-time metaphor, which absolutely blew my mind when I first encountered it. In English, we say "five years back" to mean five years ago. But in Chinese, "五年以后" (wǔ nián yǐ hòu), literally “five years behind,” refers to five years in the future. Conversely, "五年前" (wǔ nián yǐ qián), or “five years in front,” refers to five years in the past. I was so fascinated by this that I asked a number of people about it over the years.
I’ve come to believe there’s something meaningful, even philosophical, in this orientation. On one level, perhaps it reflects a civilizational posture toward history and tradition, with the past always visible, always “in front” of us. On another, maybe it’s simply a more accurate metaphor. After all, everything I perceive has already happened - even the light reaching my eyes. The past is what I can see, what is known and in view. The future, by contrast, is behind me: unseen, unknown, arriving silently from the rear.
A friend of mine once wrote a lyric that captures this beautifully: “We walk through life backwards, taking small steps on faith.” Chinese, I think, encodes that truth right into the way it tells time.