Chinese Brotherhood Spirit- Yi Qi

In Chinese, there is a kind of brotherhood called（义气）, the pinyin for which is “Yi4qi4”. (You may also want to learn pinyin with our online pinyin resources.) “义气” is a sort of solid brotherhood built on a long-term friendship and strong mutual trust. In this brotherhood, a brother would sacrifice wealth and even his own life for the salvation to the other, all for the sake of “义气”. In Chinese, there is an idiom that best this kind of brotherhood called（两肋插刀）“liang3 lei4 cha1 dao1” which means to help (one's friend) at the loss of one's life. This is an idiom that best explains this kind of valuable spirit perfectly.

Speaking of “义气”, we shall introduce another word “哥们儿” which is so popularly used in spoken Chinese that it is sometimes seen as a way of addressing a person in a slang way. It’s like “guy” or “hey man” in English. For example, if you are in trouble in a city and you want somebody that are almost the same age as you, you may say:”hey，哥们儿，please do me a favor!”

Do you have a friend that you think as “brotherhood” who will两肋插刀for you? If your answer is yes, then congratulations! In Chinese we have many brotherhood movies like “Shui3hu3zhuan4”（水浒传）or “Tou2ming2zhuang4”（投名状）. In both of these movies, brotherhood was vividly portrayed between brothers. Also, you can also find the word “Yi4qi4”（义气）if you made a comparison between these two movies. Since watching Chinese movies is also a good idea to learn Chinese, besides learn Chinese on Skype, we can also give the movies a try.