29/08/2025
Some Chinese characters and a Chinese proverb.
Some of the Chinese characters consist of two parts, one part implies their meaning, one part represents their pronunciation.
通and痛, these two Chinese characters have the pronunciation part in common, 甬, hence they pronounce similarly, like “tone”.
The meaning part of 通 is 辶, which means “through”, so 通 means “connected”, “unblocked”.
While the meaning part of 痛is 疒, it literally means “sickness”, and 痛 means “painful”.
In this Chinese proverb 通则不痛，痛则不通, 则 means “then”, 不 is simply “not”.
It means, if unblocked then you won’t feel the pain, if you feel painful, then it’s blocked somewhere.
We can swap these two characters 通 and 痛, and either statement, 通则不痛 or 痛则不通, stands.
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