What does it mean when the Chinese say to you that you hurt their feelings?

it means that they will no longer care about how you will feel about what they are going to do – it’s almost an unqualified grave threat or warning in some cases.

When the Chinese say someone else has shanghai le tamen de ganqing (伤害了他们的感情) and this expression is translated as they “have gotten their feelings hurt”, something is missing to native English speakers – the part of it that makes this expression really meanful to the Chinese.

How important is ganqing to the Chinese? If ganqing between Chinese people is hurt, it doesn’t simply make the victim “feel bad”. It makes him or her extremely disheartened. The victim interprets the hurt as a denial of all previously established rapport over a long and maybe very difficult time together and his or her past efforts to look after the inflicter’s well-being – it’s how you feel when a friend of yours betrays you, who you think you’re a loyal friend with and who you’ve always believed is a loyal friend with you, too, until the infliction occurs.

After ganqing is totally lost between two Chinese people, nothing else that matters in this relationship survives – either a romantic one or a long-time friendship.

*This post was inspired by Austin Ramzy, an Iowa, U.S.-grown,  Harbin, China-educated, and thus presumably Mandarin-speaking reporterHong Kong-born bastard writing for The Times Time, who again does his subtle China-bashing in the magazine’s blog.