心情与情绪 · Chinese Vocabulary
Feelings in Chinese
心情
Twenty-five words for how you might be feeling — plus a look at why, in Chinese-speaking culture, actually saying most of them out loud is rarer than you’d think.
Before the list
心情与情绪 — Mood & Emotion
The pattern that unlocks the whole list
我觉得 wǒ juéde — “I feel” — plus any word below turns it into a full sentence. 我觉得很紧张 wǒ juéde hěn jǐnzhāng — “I feel very nervous.” Or without a specific word at all: 我觉得心情不好 wǒ juéde xīnqíng bù hǎo — “I’m in a bad mood.”
The good ones
正面情绪 — Positive Feelings
The harder ones
负面情绪 — Negative Feelings
The feeling comes out sideways instead
Rather than naming an emotion directly, it’s common to hear it show up as a physical complaint instead — “我很累 I’m tired” standing in for burnout, or a headache mentioned before anything about stress.
It also shows up in how people greet each other. Ask a Westerner how they’re doing and “fine” is the default answer, even when it isn’t true. Ask most Chinese speakers 你好吗 nǐ hǎo ma — “how are you?” — and the honest, ordinary answer is often just 好累 hǎo lèi, “so tired.” The same goes in reverse: telling someone 你看起来很累 nǐ kànqǐlái hěn lèi — “you look tired” — isn’t considered rude. It’s a way of showing you noticed, and that you care. See the vocabulary for that in Symptoms in Chinese →
Neither, really
其他 — Neutral
The part that isn’t just vocabulary
Where TCM comes back in
七情与五脏 — The Seven Emotions & Five Organs
Traditional Chinese Medicine doesn’t treat emotion as separate from the body — each of the seven classic emotions is mapped to an organ, and too much of any one is believed to injure it directly.
Heart
Liver
Spleen
Lung
Lung
Kidney
Kidney
Why anger and the liver keep showing up together
怒 nù (anger) hitting the Liver is the pairing that comes up constantly — it’s the same logic behind 肝火旺 gānhuǒ wàng, “excessive liver fire,” used to describe someone who’s been chronically irritable or quick to snap. More on qi, organs, and the Five Elements →
The part that isn’t just vocabulary
为什么不太谈感受 — Why It’s Rarely Said Out Loud
Traditionally, Chinese families haven’t been very good at showing emotion in front of each other. A child who visibly expresses their feelings is often read as immature rather than just being honest. Growing up, if I got really excited about something, I’d be told to calm down. If I was sad, the response was usually “what’s the use of crying — does that solve anything?” If I came home upset after an argument with someone, my parents’ first question was almost always whether I’d been the one to provoke it. I won’t say every Taiwanese household works this way, but enough of my friends grew up with something similar that it doesn’t feel like just my family. It’s also part of why seeing a therapist has long carried real stigma. That said, things are shifting — attitudes in Taiwanese families have changed a lot, and children’s feelings get taken more seriously than they used to.
