Posted 2017/6/5
The Chinese Character, an Interpretable Chinese CultureIn the oracle bone inscriptions, the character “zou” (走) is shaped like a person shaking his two arms while fast walking or running. In the bronze inscriptions, the character is made up of two parts, with the upper part being a running person swinging both arms and the lower part a “zhi” (止) radical that indicates moving heels. So the character initially meant “walk fast” and later had the meanings of “run” or “dash”. It can also be used to mean “flee”. In ancient China, running was called “walking” and “walking” was called “xing” or “traveling”. In modern times, however, the character “zou” gradually changed its meaning of “running” to “walking”. All Chinese characters with the “zou” radical are mostly related to the running posture, such as “qu”(趋,meaning “hasten forward”), “fu”(赴,meaning “go to some place”) “gan” (赶,meaning “rush for something”), “chao”(超, meaning “go beyond something”), and “qu” (趣,meaning “hurry to a place”) etc.
In addition to the meaning of “walk”, the character “zou” also has some extended meanings like “exchange of contacts”, as in the phrase “zou qinqi” (meaning “visit relatives”); “move”, as in the sentence “zhongbiao buzou le” (meaning “the clock or the watch has stopped”; and “lose the original form”, as in the phrase “zouxing” (meaning “out of shape”) etc.
