Qi is all multi meaning term difficult to translate. In medicine it refers to life force, life energy. The character encapsulates the meaning in pictorial form. The bottom part being like cooking rice grains and the above strokes like the stem rising from the cooking rice. The steam, not always seen, but still felt and knowable is the qi. There are also meanings of qi being derived from nourishment. Nourishment in the broadest sense. Not only food but the other things that generate and sustain us, exercise, art, poetry, literature, love.

Gong means various things such as work on, applied effort, accomplishment.