233 To Take Care (Of Someone)

Laura Esnaola is the managing director of Care.com Europe, an organization who have over 24 million members on their platform and help families all over the world to link up with carers who are looking for work and opportunities in the field of care. Originally they started out providing care for the sick, but have expanded to offer childcare and particularly elderly care as populations in many countries are ageing. ShaoLan teaches Laura the Chinese for “taking care of somebody” and Laura shares some experiences of what she’s witnessed in China, particularly something that has impressed her, which has been the way elderly people tend to take care of each other, meeting in parks to play Chinese chess, drink tea and do TaiChi.

In Chinese, to say “care,” we say 照顧/照顾. The first word, 照 means to “illuminate” or “to shine” and the ancient form of the character showed a person holding a burning torch, so the illuminating of a place had a sense of watching over or guarding somewhere. The second word 顧/顾 was originally the shape of the head, but it gradually evolved to mean taking something into consideration, so together, illuminating and considering carefully mean that you can take good care of whatever or whoever it is!