Newsletter (2017-2018) December 2017 Newsletter | Page 15

Finding a “Guimi”
or Connecting with Many?
By June Peng
In current society, people tend to be separated
from or dependent on society. As living stan-
dards improve, the possibility of needing help
from others is rarer, and technological develop-
ments cause people to spend more spare time on
entertainment online. The connections between
people have declined. Hence, the relationships
are increasingly diluted. For older generations,
it seemed necessary for people to get together,
have picnics or visit neighbors, because there
was nothing to do at home, unlike now, when
people can watch TV, surf the Internet, and on-
line shop alone. Therefore, the bonds between
people in the past were stronger than they are
in now.
In current generation of students, some would
like to maintain weaker friendships with others
in schools. As everyone knows, normal people
cannot be totally isolated in society. Sometimes,
they still need to interact with others, for exam-
ple in class for group work. So, they could main-
tain more distant friendships with several peo-
ple in order to deal with necessary tasks. Other
students are more likely to build a strong friend-
ship with one particular person. They like chat-
ting with one specific friend online, even if they
are at a group gathering.
In Chinese, an extremely close friend like this is
called “guimi” (閨蜜). The first character “gui”
(閨) means the private room of a woman; gener-
ally, it is an unmarried woman’s bedroom. The
second character “mi”(蜜) means honey, imply-
ing that their relationship is as thick as honey
and that they are difficult to separate. So, the
combination of these two characters refers to
two very close friends who share private secrets.
This word is usually used for females in particu-
lar. Males would be called “nanguimi”(男閨蜜),
with “nan”(男) being the character for male. If a
person gets the chance to attend the same school
as their “guimi”, it is said that they would be in-
separable all day—studying together, eating to-
gether, playing together, going to bed together.
Under this environment, is it better for people
to maintain weaker relationships with several
people or have an extremely strong relationship
with one particular friend? It is difficult to main-
tain strong relationships with multiple people
because people have limited energy. Additional-
ly, it’s impossible to be isolated from everyone in
human society. Hence, let’s consider these two
forms of friendship.
It is a pleasurable thing to have one close friend
In Chinese, an extremely close friend is called a “guimi” (闺蜜). Is it better to have a “guimi”...
DECEMBER 2017
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