An Etymological Study of the Key Word“Qi” in Chinese Culture

As a key word of Chinese culture, “qi” is undoubtedly universally significant like the other concepts. In spite of that, its universal meaning was inevitably derived from its original one and has evolved out of it. Because of long time, the history river has already washed such evolution away and no trace can be found now. Therefore, we have to make a careful interpretation of it from a perspective of etymology in order to know the cultural and literary connotations of this word.