Posted 2017/7/30
“Bing”(“并”) is an associative character that looks like two people standing side by side in the oracle bone inscriptions, with the horizontal line underfoot indicating the ground. So the character showing two people standing shoulder to shoulder on the ground initially meant “to go side by side” or “run parallel”. In the small seal script, though, the horizontal line representing the ground is broken in two; and in the regular script, the character evolves into a combination of two “li” (立, meaning “to stand”) characters. During the evolving process, the character also had the variant form of “並”. It wasn't until the simplification of Chinese characters that “bing” became what it is today.
Based on the original meaning of this character, a host of derivative meanings were given to the character, including “to annex or merger”, “whole; total” and “all” etc. In ancient times, the joint burial of a married couple was referred to as “bing gu” (literally “the joining of bones”). And the phrase “bing jia qi qu” means “horses harnessed side by side run together”, it is used to describe horses or people etc in a race or competition having equal ability and equal chance of wining.
