The Chinese symbol for love: 爱, its meaning, parts and how to write it
The Chinese character for love is 爱, read ài in the fourth tone: your voice drops short and sharp from high to low, like a firm "No!". It is one character and one word at the same time: . In mainland China it is written this way, with ten strokes; in traditional Chinese and in Japanese it looks like 愛, with thirteen.
What is the Chinese symbol for love?
爱 is a word from the very first lessons. Most of the time it is the verb "to love": . How to say it and when Chinese people actually do is covered on the page "I love you" in Chinese.
The same character is also the noun "love": Chinese words don't change form, so you tell the part of speech by where the word stands in the sentence. You can love more than a person: . And before another verb, 爱 means "to love doing something, to tend to": 爱笑 is "to laugh a lot, to love a good laugh". Examples and a breakdown of the word are on the page 爱 in the dictionary.
What the love character is made of: 爱 and 愛
The character has two forms. The simplified one has been standard in mainland China since the 1950s; the traditional one is older and more complex.
| Form | Character | Strokes | Where it's used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified | 爱 | 10 | mainland China, Singapore |
| Traditional | 愛 | 13 | Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan |
The top is the same in both: three short strokes under a slanting one, and a "cover" beneath them. The difference is in the middle and at the bottom. The traditional 愛 has in the middle. In the simplified 爱, the lower part was replaced with 友 (yǒu), "friend", the same character as in .
Hence the well-known joke: simplification gave China "love without a heart". It is only a joke; you could just as well say that love gained a friend. Both pictures work as memory hooks: 愛 has a heart inside, 爱 has a friend. How characters are built from parts is explained in a separate article on Chinese radicals.
How to write the love character: stroke order
The simplified 爱 has ten strokes. You write from top to bottom, and inside each part from left to right. It helps to see the character as three floors:
| Part | Strokes | What you write |
|---|---|---|
| Top | 1–4 | a short slanting stroke from right to left, then two dots under it and one more short falling stroke |
| Cover | 5–6 | a dot on the left and a horizontal stroke with a hook at the end |
| Bottom: 友 | 7–10 | a horizontal, a long stroke falling to the left, a horizontal that turns down to the left, and a stroke falling to the right |
The last stroke is the long one falling to the right: it closes the character and keeps it balanced. In the traditional 愛, the top and the cover are the same, then come the four strokes of the heart 心 and three strokes at the bottom, thirteen in all. The general rules of stroke order are in the article how to write Chinese characters.
Are the Chinese and Japanese symbols for love the same?
Yes, it's the same character. Japanese writing took its characters from China, and "love" in Japanese is written 愛, exactly as in traditional Chinese. It's read ai, almost like the Chinese ài, only without a tone. The meaning is the same.
There is one difference: Japan never simplified this character, so the form 爱 isn't used there. If you want the Japanese kanji for love, use 愛. If you want Chinese as it is written today in Beijing and Shanghai, use 爱. In Taiwan and Hong Kong, it's 愛 again.
Words with the character 爱
On its own the character is already a word, but most Chinese words have two syllables. There are dozens with 爱; here are the most common:
- 爱情àiqínglove (romantic)the feeling between two people
- 恋爱liàn’àilove; to date (of a couple)about relationships
- 爱人àirenhusband or wifea spouse, either one
- 亲爱qīn’àidear (when addressing someone)亲爱的 is "darling, my dear"
- 可爱kě’àicutekids, cats, things
- 爱好àihàohobby, interestwhat you love doing
- 热爱rè’àito love passionatelyyour work, your country, life
- 爱心àixīnkindness, compassionliterally "a loving heart"
Note 爱人: literally "beloved person", but in mainland China it means your lawful husband or wife, not a lover. More common characters with their meanings are on the page Chinese characters and their meanings.
爱 vs 喜欢: love or like?
In English you "love" your mom and you "love" pizza. Chinese is stricter: for the everyday "I love it", people usually reach for a different word, : .
- 喜欢 is "like". Food, music, a city, a pastime, a person you're into. It's a light word that commits you to nothing.
- 爱 is love for real. Family, a partner, your country, your life's work. Said to a person, it sounds like a declaration.
So "I like you" is 喜欢, and "I love you" is 爱. Mixing them up isn't a disaster, but the difference in strength is clearly felt.
The love symbol for a card, a gift or a tattoo
The character often appears on cards, jewelry and wall art, and it's a popular tattoo. Before you take an image from a search, check four things.
- Simplified or traditional. Both are correct. 爱 is modern mainland Chinese; 愛 is traditional Chinese and Japanese. Calligraphy more often uses 愛, because the heart shows in it. What matters is choosing on purpose, not by accident.
- The font. A printed character is neat and even, like in a book. A calligraphic one is written with a brush, and in cursive styles the strokes merge until the character is hard to recognize. Compare the design with a printed sample: are all the parts there?
- Don't flip or mirror it. A character has a top and a bottom, a left and a right. A mirrored image is no longer 爱 but a mistake anyone who reads Chinese will notice.
- What a single character means. On its own, 爱 means just "love, to love", without shades like "eternal" or "my". If you want those, you need a word or a phrase, not one character.
More on getting the character right on your skin is in the article Chinese tattoo symbols.
The Chinese characters for love and happiness together
These two wishes are often placed side by side. "Happiness" as a lucky sign is : it goes up on front doors at Chinese New Year. "Happiness" as a word in everyday speech is .
On a card or in a frame, you write two separate characters, 爱 and 福, "love" and "happiness". They are a pair of wishes, not one word: nobody reads them together as a phrase. If you need a real sentence, build it on 幸福. The character 福 and its variants are covered in the article the Chinese symbol for happiness.
Write 爱 yourself
The handwriting sheets show the stroke order: watch it, trace it and write it in the grid.
Open handwriting practice
