Traditional Chinese (cantonese culture) expression, sour sting
酸 can mean sour or caustic, something like lemon is 酸, acids are 酸...it can also describe an emotional feeling.
甜在心頭, literally, sweet-at-heart-head...but more accurately as "sweet at the head of our heart", describes a feeling, it's like feeling warmth your belly during a hug, you feel a sweetness like sugar or honey when your love gives you flowers or tell you that you are lovely while you are down with the flu, and means it.
There are two popular expressions that uses sour/caustic
心酸: heart sour (heart turned to acid?)
鼻酸: nose sour
It tends to be that 心酸 is used to describe a devastating situation, where it gets to your heart and you can't even cry it out. Like watching scenes of Philippines under water after the tropical storms a few weeks ago, or hearing about how a girl had been kept a prisoner for over a decade, locked in with the children that was a result of her rape. 心酸 tends to be the feeling for hopeless horror.
When the feeling of sourness is up our nose, when we are tearing up, 鼻酸 can describes tears of happiness, of relief, of feeling touched by kindness. It can be tears of sadness, thinking back on how wonderful someone who has died was, during an memorial, one gets 鼻酸, and then one begins to tear up. While one is sad for the lost of someone wonderful, the focus is not on the absence of that wonderful person, the lack of wonderful, but that the person was wonderful to begin with. One can get 鼻酸 after a tragedy, when the help arrives in the form of a cavalry when you thought you have been abandoned (or the doubt was there), or the embrace of a good friend or family member, after the lost of someone dear to you and you were feeling alone.
甜在心頭, literally, sweet-at-heart-head...but more accurately as "sweet at the head of our heart", describes a feeling, it's like feeling warmth your belly during a hug, you feel a sweetness like sugar or honey when your love gives you flowers or tell you that you are lovely while you are down with the flu, and means it.
There are two popular expressions that uses sour/caustic
心酸: heart sour (heart turned to acid?)
鼻酸: nose sour
It tends to be that 心酸 is used to describe a devastating situation, where it gets to your heart and you can't even cry it out. Like watching scenes of Philippines under water after the tropical storms a few weeks ago, or hearing about how a girl had been kept a prisoner for over a decade, locked in with the children that was a result of her rape. 心酸 tends to be the feeling for hopeless horror.
When the feeling of sourness is up our nose, when we are tearing up, 鼻酸 can describes tears of happiness, of relief, of feeling touched by kindness. It can be tears of sadness, thinking back on how wonderful someone who has died was, during an memorial, one gets 鼻酸, and then one begins to tear up. While one is sad for the lost of someone wonderful, the focus is not on the absence of that wonderful person, the lack of wonderful, but that the person was wonderful to begin with. One can get 鼻酸 after a tragedy, when the help arrives in the form of a cavalry when you thought you have been abandoned (or the doubt was there), or the embrace of a good friend or family member, after the lost of someone dear to you and you were feeling alone.