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| Adventures in Asian Art | | |||||||
We have many options to create artwork with the Chinese characters / Asian symbols / Japanese Kanji for Best friends on a wall scroll or portrait.
If you want to create a cool Best friends Asian character tattoo, you can purchase that on our Chinese and Japanese Tattoo Image Service page and we'll help you select from many forms of ancient Asian symbols that express the idea of Best friends.
Quick links to words on this page...
Mandarin: zhì yǒu
This one way to say best friend in Chinese.
The first character can mean "most", "extreme" or "best".
The second character means "friend" or "friends" (plural forms work differently in China).
Can also be translated as "close friend" or "most intimate friend".
See Also... Friendship | Soulmates
Mandarin: zhì jiāo
This an alternate way to say best friend in Chinese.
The first character can mean "most", "extreme" or "best". The second character means "making friends" or "building friendship". There's sort of a suggestion with the second character that fate caused you to intersect in life and become friends (that character can mean intersection in some context).
This can also mean "most intimate friend", "very good friend of long standing", or "closest friend".
See Also... Friendship | Soulmates
Japanese: shin yuu
Korean: 친우
This is the Japanese way to say "best friend".
The first character can mean "relative" or sometimes "parents". The second character means "friend". Think about the close relationship that Japanese people have with their parents and relatives, and this starts to mean "close friends".
Some Japanese-English dictionaries also translate this as "bosom friend", "old friend", "intimate friend", "buddy", "crony" or "chum".
Note that in Chinese, this has the meaning of "relatives and friends" so only select this if Japanese is your target audience.
Mandarin: jiào yǒu
Korean: 교우
Depending on context, this word can mean Christian or "friend of the same religion". While technically it could be any religion, this is used mostly within the Christian faith. You can also translate this as "Christian friend" and in some cases "Church member".
Single Character
Mandarin: yǒu
Japanese: tomo
Korean: 우
This is the simplest way to express the idea of friends or friendship in Chinese. It can mean friend, companion, or pal in Japanese. In Korean, it can mean friend, companion, or associate.
This single characters is open to interpretation, so it can mean different things to different people (not necessarily a bad thing, as you can decide what it means to you). If you want a more concisely-defined word, you should probably pick one of our multi-character friendship-related words.
See Also... Friendly | Friendship
Japanese: tomo dachi
Mandarin: yǒng yuǎn de péng yǒu
This is exactly what the title suggests. This means friends that are eternal or a friendship that will last forever - you will remain the best of friends as long as you live.
The first two characters mean forever, eternal, eternity, perpetuity, immortality, and/or permanence.
The middle character links the words (it's a possessive article).
The last two characters represent friendship, or simply "friends".
Wall scroll artwork shown on this page is priced as follows:
1 character $29.88 each
2-3 characters $39.88 each
5-10 characters $59.88 each
After you select your calligraphy, our website will take you through the process of customizing your artwork.
Options for other mounting such as portraits are available for $13 less.
We also offer the services of a famous master calligrapher for a $40 fee on any scroll if you are looking for investment-quality calligraphy.
If you chose our famous master-calligrapher, you also get more choices for silk and paper colors and the option for larger artwork.
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 at least 3 weeks for delivery from the time you place your order.
When you select your calligraphy, you'll be taken to another page where you can choose various custom options.
Prices for
custom wall scrolls
shown on this page:
Single-Character:
USD $29.88
GBP £18.13
EUR €20.17
CAD $32.02
AUS $32.87
2-3 Characters:
USD $39.88
GBP £24.20
EUR €26.92
CAD $42.74
AUS $43.87
5-10 Characters:
USD $59.88
GBP £36.34
EUR €40.42
CAD $64.17
AUS $65.88
Customizations that you select may raise or lower the price.
The scroll that I am holding in this picture is a "regular 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 Hanyu-Pinyin (Romanized Chinese) | |||
| Best Friends / Closest Friend | 至友 至友 | n/a | zhì yǒu zhi you | zhi4 you3 zhiyou | ||
| Best Friends | 至交 至交 | n/a | zhì jiāo zhi jiao | zhi4 jiao1 zhijiao | ||
| Best Friends (Japanese Only) | 亲友 親友 | shin yuu shinyuu shin yu | n/a | |||
| Christian Friend | 教友 教友 | n/a | jiào yǒu jiao you | jiao4 you3 jiaoyou | ||
| Friend / Friendship | 友 友 | tomo | yǒu you | you3 you | ||
| Friend (Japanese) | 友达 友達 | tomo dachi tomodachi | n/a | |||
| Friends Forever | 永远的朋友 永遠的朋友 | n/a | yǒng yuǎn de péng yǒu yong yuan de peng you | yong3 yuan3 de peng2 you3 yongyuandepengyou | ||
| 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 we spent hundreds of hours making images so that you could view the characters in the "Best friends" 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. | ||||||
All custom calligraphy items are made-to-order in our little Beijing artwork-mounting workshop.
Please note: Rush service can be as fast as two weeks, but regular service is over a month for delivery.
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