Heart-Aching Love (Teng)

Abstract

There is a widely accepted notion that Asians have a proclivity for mixed, otherwise known as ambivalent, emotional states, due to their subscription to the dialectics that allow for the simultaneous experience of positive and negative emotions. The problem with this formulation is that emotion is treated by the researchers as a blending system, when it is in fact a particulate system, such that blends of feeling states do not necessarily become one monochromatic emotional state. For many people, emotional blends are nuanced experiences with a richness and complexity that cannot be found in the simple structure of ambivalence or mixed feelings. A good example of nuanced emotional blends is "heart-aching love" (xin-teng, or teng for short).