In its simplified form the characters for 阴阳 — “yin/yang” can fit quite nicely together. With certain effort one of them can be written on black paper in white ink, making it a very graphical representation of the duality principle they embody.
The common phrase for “being angry” is 生氣 and it was quite a surprise for me to discover that graphically upper part of 氣 “energy/air/anger“ coincides with horizontal elements of 生 “to give birth/to start”.
Wouldn’t you agree that 男 “male” and 鬼 “ghost/devil” seemingly share their top part? So, why not combine them into one: “sinister male” if you turn it one way or “male ghost” if you turn it the other. Hmmm, isn’t it a bit toxic?
The left part of the simplified character 战 from a certain angle looks like a tank, especially if wheels are added. And what about the right part? Well, I don’t know, who is on the right part…
同 “same” + 情 “feeling” means “compassion”. Does the 同 with its sorrowful mouth make a pitiful face, feeling for someone else troubles or is it a hypocritical trickster just pretending to feel sorry?
雨 is “rain” and with just one splash the right part of 雨 becomes R and the rest just kind of drops in the right places.
言 is more of a “spoken word” than just a word, but I’d say the mix of 言 and “word” creates a word recognizable in both languages.
The pair of characters used to translate the concept of “freedom” actually has more precise connotations in Chinese: 自由 can be interpreted as 由 “acting on behalf/setting forth/being the origin” in 自 “oneself”, e.g. one is free when one’s decisions and actions are coming from oneself. But 自 “self” can be our biggest prison or limiting factor, hence I added the bars. All other connotations I leave to the liberty of the viewer.
The concept of “to have” in Chinese is expressed with the character 有. In Cantonese, there is also 冇 which means “not to have”. I placed 金 — “gold/money” into either 有 or 冇 and only the viewer can say if that means “having money” or “not having money”. Duality has always played an important role in the Chinese worldview.
The word «agreement» in Chinese is a combination of 同 “sameness” + 意 “idea”. The square element of 同 is called “mouth” and I painted it as a mouth open in a macabre grin with a few teeth. I think you’d agree that sometimes we agree to agree with a painful smile.
