About Chinese Idioms

What this site is

Chinese Idioms started as a reference for chengyu (成语), the four-character idioms that compress a whole story into a phrase. Today it covers more than 1,000 idioms, each with characters, pinyin, a literal and a figurative meaning, the story or text it comes from, and an example sentence. Around that core we explain the parts of Chinese that learners and viewers actually run into: internet slang, Chinese names, the HSK exam, classical poems, mythology, the zodiac and festivals, and the history and language behind Chinese dramas.

We are an independent team. We are not affiliated with any government, broadcaster, streaming platform or testing body, and no one pays to be covered.

The Daily Chinese Idioms app

The same team makes Daily Chinese Idioms for iOS, which teaches one idiom a day. The idiom histories on this site are shared with the app, so a correction made in one place is made in both.

Languages

Articles are written in English and translated into Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Korean and Indonesian. Chinese text, names and quotations are kept in the original characters in every language.

How we work

Every factual claim is checked against named sources before it is published, and where good sources disagree we say so rather than pick a side. The full process, including how we use AI tools and how corrections are handled, is on our editorial standards page.