Judging Friends

Title: Judging Friends

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal Folkore, Proverb
  • Language: Chinese
  • Country of Origin: China
  • Informant: Lillian Zhao
  • Date Collected: 10-15-18

Informant Data:

The informant is a Chinese American student from the Bay Area. She grew up speaking Mandarin at home with her parents who are immigrants from China. At Dartmouth, Lillian is a Quantitative Social Science Major, opinion writer for The Dartmouth, and a leader in both The Dartmouth Consulting Club and Women in Business.

Contextual Data:

The informant reported that she heard this proverb from many times from her family as a child. Her parents wanted her to be more open minded. Growing up as a minority, especially in a multilingual family, leaves you very exposed to judgments of other people. This negative atmosphere can heavily influence one’s own impressions on the outside world. Lillian’s family wanted to make sure she grew up without being judgmental of others.

Item:

人不可貌相,海水不可斗量

rén bù kě mào xiàng , hǎi shuǐ bù kě dǒu liàng

Literal Translation: People cannot measure with facial feature, sea water cannot measure with little amount

Meaning: You can’t judge a person by appearance, just as you can’t measure the sea with a pint pot.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript:

“This is something i heard a lot growing up about not judging people by what they look like rén bù kě mào xiàng , hǎi shuǐ bù kě dǒu liàng”

Informant’s Comments:

Lillian thinks about this proverb often during her interactions with other Dartmouth students. As a campus mainly filled by children of wealthy individuals, the college has a culture in which stereotypes of race and class easily permeate thoughts. Lillian uses this proverb to remind herself to learn about people as individuals and not pass immediate judgments.

Collector’s Comments:

Related to friendship, it seems Lillian has used this proverb a lot when meeting new people in college. I related a lot to her when she said that race and class really permeate the culture here at Dartmouth and that people can sometimes be a bit too presumptuous regarding these two characteristics.

Like other proverbs collected, this one also follows the similar 2 clause structure thus the proverb has symmetry in number of characters on both sides. In addition the “bù kě” takes the same position on both sides thus adding some audio symmetry.

Collector’s Name: James Wen

Tags/Keywords:

  • Chinese
  • Friends
  • Judging
  • Finding Friends

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