Chinese Symbol for Friendship (友): Meaning and Origin

友 is four strokes, and for once the character means almost exactly what it looks like. It is two hands. The top is a hand drawn as a short stroke crossed by a down-left sweep; below it sits 又, which is itself an old drawing of a right hand. Two hands, one above the other, both reaching the same direction, which is about as neat a picture of friendship as writing gets. You write it top to bottom, the upper hand first. There is no simplified-versus-traditional trap here, either. 友 is written exactly the same on both sides of the strait, so unlike a character such as 龙 / 龍, there is no second version to weigh up.

友 (yǒu) is the friend idea at its most basic: a companion, an ally, someone on your side. English leans on the one word "friendship," where Chinese spreads the idea across a small family of terms, and it is worth knowing which is which. 友 on its own is the bare root, "friend" or "friendly," and the single character people usually want as a symbol. Stack it into 友谊 (yǒuyì) and you get friendship as a noun, the bond itself, the word that goes on a certificate or a treaty. 友情 (yǒuqíng) is the feeling, the warmth between friends. And the ordinary word for "a friend," the one you actually say out loud, is 朋友 (péngyou). For a tattoo or a piece of art, 友 is the clean single-character choice; the longer words are for sentences.

Life inside the friend-circle

If you want to see how central friends are to daily Chinese life, open WeChat. Its social feed, where a billion people post photos, gripes, and humblebrags, is called the péngyouquān, literally the "friend-circle." To be in someone's friend-circle is to be in their life; to be quietly dropped from it is a small modern heartbreak. The entire social internet, in other words, is filed under the word for friend.

Bros, besties, and plastic sisters

Spoken Chinese has warm, specific slang for the kinds of friends. A close male buddy is a gēmenr, roughly "bro"; an inseparable female best friend is a guīmì, a bestie. And the internet, ever sharp, coined a phrase that translates to "plastic sisterhood," for friends who are all sweetness in public and knives in private, the fake-friend group given a perfect, brittle name.

The friendship boat that keeps capsizing

In 2016 the Chinese web produced one of its stickiest jokes, a line that translates to "the ship of friendship capsizes at the slightest thing." It began as a cartoon and became the template for a whole genre of memes about how easily a friendship can be sunk by something petty, one friend graduating first, say, and over the little boat goes. It is affectionate and faintly cynical at once, which is exactly the register modern friendship jokes live in.

A name that means friend

友 is a genuine given-name character, chosen to wish a child warmth and loyalty. Its most famous bearer is the Cantopop legend Jacky Cheung, 张学友, one of Hong Kong's "Four Heavenly Kings" and a singer so dominant he is nicknamed the "God of Songs." His given name, 学友, means, almost sweetly, "study-friend," a schoolmate. Curious what your own name would look like as a Chinese one built the same way, from sound and a well-omened meaning?

Build a Chinese name from the sound of your own name and a well-omened meaning.

The two-hands reading is not a folk invention; it is what the oldest sources say. The Shuowen Jiezi, the first Chinese dictionary, compiled around the year 100, glosses 友 as "those of the same aim are friends," and then explains the character flatly: it is built "from two hands," clasped in mutual good faith. The oracle-bone and bronze forms from three thousand years ago back this up, showing two right hands side by side, fingers pointing the same way. That image, two hands moving together, quietly sets the terms for the whole idea. A Chinese friend, in the oldest sense of the word, is not just someone you like. It is someone whose hand is pointed the same direction as yours, who shares your aim and pulls with you toward it.

What Confucius said about friends

Friendship sits, quite literally, at the opening of the Chinese classical tradition. The very first passage of the Analects, the third line Confucius is recorded as speaking, is about friends. In James Legge's translation it runs, "Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?" It is the sentence Chinese schoolchildren memorize first, and it makes the arrival of a far-off friend one of life's defining joys. Confucius was clear-eyed about choosing them, too: elsewhere in the same book he advises, again in Legge's words, "Have no friends not equal to yourself," a bracingly practical note on keeping company that lifts you rather than drags you down.

The one who knows your tune

The most beautiful Chinese idea about friendship is the zhīyīn (知音), "the one who knows the sound." It comes from the story of Bo Ya, a master of the ancient zither, and a woodcutter named Zhong Ziqi. When Bo Ya played a piece imagining high mountains, Ziqi heard the mountains in it; when he played of rushing water, Ziqi heard the great rivers. No one else had ever truly heard what Bo Ya was playing. When Ziqi died, the story goes, Bo Ya smashed his zither and never played again, because the one person who understood his music was gone. That is what a zhīyīn is: not just a friend, but the rare soul who understands you completely. The idiom for it, "high mountains and flowing water," still means precisely that kind of understanding.

Guan and Bao

For loyalty, the model is the friendship of Guan and Bao, recorded in the Records of the Grand Historian. Guan Zhong and Bao Shuya were friends from youth, and Bao Shuya stood by Guan Zhong through failed ventures, cowardice in battle, and worse, always reading his friend's actions in the most generous light, and later gave up his own position to recommend Guan Zhong as prime minister. Guan Zhong's famous verdict was, "It was my parents who gave me birth, but it was Bao Shuya who truly knew me." Their names are still shorthand for a friendship of complete mutual trust.

Bland as water

A quieter note comes from the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi: the friendship of a gentleman, he wrote, is "bland as water." It sounds like faint praise and is actually the highest kind. A friendship that runs on flattery, favors, and rich dinners, Zhuangzi warns, curdles the moment the favors dry up; one that is plain and undemanding as water lasts a lifetime. Chinese culture has prized the understated, low-maintenance friendship ever since.