For the character “眉”, the upper stroke in the character represents the eyebrow above the “目” (mu, “eyes”). When Chinese praise someone’s beauty, they often use the expression—“眉清目秀méi qīn? mù xiù”, which means “to have delicate eye brows and beautiful eyes”. “眉” and “目” both denote a person’s appearance. This expression means that the person is delicate, pretty and refined. The Chinese people believe that a woman’s eyebrow should be long and curvy. This is known as “娥眉” (é méi, “delicate eyebrows”).
In Sichuan, there is a mountain with two opposing peaks, just like a pair of curved eyebrows. This mountain is thus called Mount Emeri (“娥眉山”). Later, people changed the character “娥” to “峨”, which used “山” (mountain) instead of “女” (female) as its radical. Mount Emei is a famous Buddhist mountain.
For the character “看”, Chinese people just add a “手” (hand) to the Chinese character “目” gives the character. People need to hold their hand over their eye in order to see clearly in the bright sun. Therefore, the original meaning of “看” was “to look into distance”. Today, the character “看” can be used in expressions such as “看书” (to read books), “看电视” (watch TV) and so on.