Often, we hear people say, "Honey, I love you with all my heart!" Sir Phillip Sidney wrote "My true love hath my heart." Also, have heard that Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul?" It is the most important commandment of all.
It is no doubt how closely love and heart are related. Guess what? When you pay close attention to the Chinese character, or hanzi, for Love you will notice a heart right in the middle of it! Amazing, isn't it? Also, it is very easy to pronounce. It sounds like the English word "I" or "eye", in Mandarin Chinese.
Sometimes you might find Love written resembling Simplified Love below. What happened to the heart?
It is gone! This kind of character is a simplified character. It is new, but not necessarily better, at least in this case.
The Chinese have been using the traditional characters for several thousand years. About 50 years ago the government of China changed the writing system. It was a stepping-stone towards eliminating characters and eventually replacing them with the Western Roman alphabet. Fortunately, this plan is no longer in place. However, simplified characters are here to stay.
Simplified characters are fewer in number and are designed to be easier to learn because the characters have fewer strokes. At this time, simplified characters are used officially in China.