There is an old Chinese feeling that is difficult to translate into a single English word.
It is the feeling of meeting someone who seems to understand the landscape of your heart before you have learned how to describe it yourself.
Perhaps it is a person who hears the sadness beneath your silence, recognizes the happiness in your eyes, or understands why a certain song, a certain season, or a distant moon can suddenly make you think of home.
In modern English, we might call such a person a soul mate.
But the Chinese imagination of a soul mate is older, quieter, and more intricate than the idea of finding “the one.”
It is woven through the ancient ideas of 知己 (zhiji), the person who truly knows you; 知音 (zhiyin), the one who understands the music within your heart; and 缘分 (yuanfen), the mysterious thread that brings two people into one another’s lives.
Across centuries, Chinese poets wrote …