复合方向补语 fùhé fāngxiàng bǔyǔ — Compound Direction Complement
A compound direction complement stacks a basic direction word (like 上 shàng or 出 chū) together with 来 lái or 去 qù, so the sentence shows both which direction and relative to the speaker, which way.
This builds directly on 方向补语 fāngxiàng bǔyǔ Direction Complement 1 — if 来 lái / 去 qù are new to you, start there first.
Follow a black cat and a white cat through the city in this short story — from getting up (起来 qǐlái) to crossing the street, sneaking through a school gate, and climbing over a wall, it works in nearly every compound direction complement pair on this page. Watch all the way through for a sweet twist at the end.
1 What Is a Compound Direction Complement?
Take any basic direction word and add 来 lái or 去 qù to it, and you get a compound direction complement — now the sentence tells you not just the direction of the movement, but whether it’s heading toward or away from the speaker.
| Direction | + 来 lái (toward speaker) | + 去 qù (away from speaker) |
|---|---|---|
| 上 shàng | 上来 shànglái — come up | 上去 shàngqù — go up |
| 下 xià | 下来 xiàlái — come down | 下去 xiàqù — go down |
| 进 jìn | 进来 jìnlái — come in | 进去 jìnqù — go in |
| 出 chū | 出来 chūlái — come out | 出去 chūqù — go out |
| 回 huí | 回来 huílái — come back | 回去 huíqù — go back |
| 过 guò | 过来 guòlái — come over | 过去 guòqù — go over |
| 起 qǐ | 起来 qǐlái — get up, rise | — |
2 来 lái vs 去 qù — Toward or Away
The whole choice between 来 lái and 去 qù comes down to one question: where is the speaker standing? These example sentences are from a little illustrated story about a pet cat and a stray cat — watch how the direction word flips depending on who’s talking and where they are.
A cat finishes grooming itself and decides it’s time to get up and go find something to eat.
Two cats walking along the top of a wall — one jumps down and tells the other to stay up there.
Back where they started — and the white cat finally explains why it followed all along.
3 Where Does the Object Go?
There are three possible word orders once an object is involved.
1. V + Compound Direction Complement + O
2. V + Direction Word + O + 来 lái / 去 qù
If the object names a place, it can’t go after the whole compound direction complement (pattern 1 above) — it has to sit between the direction word and 来 lái / 去 qù, like pattern 2.
✓ 我们开车回台北去。 wǒmen kāichē huí Táiběi qù — “We’re driving back to Taipei.” (Táiběi is a place, so it sits between 回 huí and 去 qù)
✗ 我们开车回去台北。 wǒmen kāichē huíqù Táiběi — not how a native speaker would say it.
3. V + O + Compound Direction Complement
When there’s a verb, negation words always go in front of the verb — never in front of the complement.
4 搬出 bānchū vs 搬出来 bān chūlái
The plain direction word and the compound version aren’t always interchangeable — the compound version adds the speaker’s point of view.
5 Practice
Translate each sentence into Chinese, then tap the card to check your answer.
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