This word is often used to describe the beauty of a woman. It's also the first character in the word for "beauty salon" which you will see all over China.
For a bit of trivia: The title for the "USA" in Chinese is "Mei Guo" which literally means "Beautiful Country". This name was bestowed at a time before Chairman Mao came to power and decided that China didn't like the USA anymore (even though we fought together against the Japanese in WWII). But these days, Chinese people love Americans (but have distaste for American politics and policy). But I digress...
This is also how "Beautiful" is written in Japanese Kanji and Korean Hanja.
This is the best and most polite way to express "beautiful woman" in Chinese.
Note: Some people may like the simple 2-character way to express this, but there are some bad connotations with that, so better to stay with this longer and more respectful title.
All of our calligraphy is completely done by hand in the ancient way.
When the calligrapher finishes creating your artwork, it is taken to our art mounting workshop in Beijing where a wall scroll is made by hand from a combination of silk, rice paper, and wood.
After we create your wall scroll, it takes at least two weeks for air mail delivery from Beijing to you.
Therefore, allow a few weeks for delivery from the time you place your order. Rush options are available!
When you select your calligraphy, you'll be taken to another page where you can choose various custom options.
The scroll that I am holding in this picture is a "medium size" 4-character wall scroll. As you can see, it is a great size to hang on your wall. (We also offer custom wall scrolls in larger sizes)
Professional calligraphers are getting to be hard to find these days. Instead of drawing characters by hand, the new generation in China merely type roman letters into their computer keyboards and pick the character that they want from a list that pops up.
There is some fear that true Chinese calligraphy may become a lost art in the coming years. Many art institutes in China are now promoting calligraphy programs in hopes of keeping this unique form
of art alive.
Even with the teachings of a top-ranked calligrapher in China, my calligraphy will never be good enough to sell. I will leave that to the experts.
The same calligrapher who gave me those lessons also
attracted a crowd of thousands and a TV crew as he created characters over
6-feet high. He happens to be ranked as one of the top 100 calligraphers
in all of China. He is also one of very few that would actually attempt
such a feat.
The following table is only helpful for those studying Chinese (or Japanese), and perhaps helps search engines to find this page when someone enters Romanized Chinese or Japanese
Title
Characters
Simplified Traditional
Japanese Romaji (Romanized Japanese)
Various forms of Romanized Chinese
Beautiful Girl
美丽的姑娘 美麗的姑娘
n/a
měi lì de gū niang mei li de gu niang mei li te ku niang
mei3 li4 de gu1 niang meilideguniang
Beauty / Beautiful
美 美
bi
měi mei
mei3 mei
Beautiful Woman
美丽的女人 美麗的女人
n/a
měi lì de nǚ rén mei li de nv ren mei li te nü jen
mei3 li4 de nv3 ren2 meilidenvren
If you have not set up your computer to display Chinese, the characters in this table probably look like empty boxes or random text garbage.
This is why I spent hundreds of hours making images so that you could view the characters in the "beautiful girl" listings above.
If you want your Windows computer to be able to display Chinese characters you can either head to your Regional and Language options in your Win XP control panel, select the [Languages] tab and click on [Install files for East Asian Languages]. This task will ask for your Win XP CD to complete in most cases. If you don't have your Windows XP CD, or are running Windows 98, you can also download/run the simplified Chinese font package installer from Microsoft which works independently with Win 98, ME, 2000, and XP. It's a 2.5MB download, so if you are on dial up, start the download and go make a sandwich.
Some people may refer to this entry as Kanji, Characters, in Mandarin Chinese, Characters, in Chinese Writing, in Japanese Writing, in Asian Writing, Ideograms, Chinese symbols, Hieroglyphics, Glyphs, in Chinese Letters, Hanzi, in Japanese Kanji, Pictograms, in the Chinese Written-Language, or in the Japanese Written-Language.
way to express this, but there are some bad connotations with that, so better to stay with this longer and more respectful title.
