10 Chinese Idioms for Self-Improvement & Personal Growth

Continue efforts with undiminished enthusiasm

Literal: Engage again, whet the beak again

This is from a linked poem by Han Yu and Meng Jiao on cockfighting: between rounds the bird engages again (再接) and again whets (再厉) its beak on the ground. 厉 is sharpening, not encouragement, and the bird is resharpening between bouts rather than being urged on. Modern usage tells someone to keep go...

Vibrant youthful energy and enthusiasm

Literal: Morning vigor flourishing

朝气 is the vigour of the early morning, set in Chinese against 暮气, the flatness of evening, and the pair is used of people rather than of times of day. 蓬勃 is the vocabulary of plants growing thickly. So the phrase claims the energy of a morning and the growth of a spring together, and it is applied t...

Being practical and down-to-earth

Literal: Feet stepping on solid ground

Feet (脚) planted (踏) on solid (实) ground (地). Sima Guang, who spent nineteen years compiling a history of thirteen centuries, is the man the phrase attached itself to — a contemporary is said to have used it of him, and the fit is obvious enough that it stuck. What it praises is not effort but conta...

Wholeheartedly; with undivided attention

Literal: One heart one mind

One (一) heart (心), one (一) intention (意). The repetition is doing the work: 心 and 意 are separate faculties in Chinese, feeling and purpose, and the phrase insists that both are pointed the same way, which is a stronger claim than concentration alone. Its opposites are instructive — 三心二意, three heart...

Indomitable; unyielding

Literal: Neither bend nor yield

Neither (不) bending (屈) nor (不) yielding (挠). 屈 is to bend something that ought to be straight and 挠 is to give way under a load, so the two halves cover pressure applied from outside and pressure that comes from the weight itself. Doubling the negation is the whole rhetorical move: nothing is asser...

Play to one's strengths

Literal: Promote strengths avoid weaknesses

Raising up (扬) what is long (长) and steering clear of (避) what is short (短). 长 and 短 are literally the long and the short of a thing, and Chinese uses them for strengths and weaknesses without the moral weight English puts on those words — they are measurements. That is what makes the advice practic...

Solve a problem once and for all

Literal: One labor forever ease

One (一) exertion (劳) and lasting (永) ease (逸). Ban Gu uses the older form in an inscription cut on a mountain after a frontier campaign, arguing that one hard effort had bought a long peace. That is the claim the phrase always makes, and Chinese treats it with some suspicion: it appears at least as ...

Devote oneself completely; work until exhausted

Literal: Bow and exhaust oneself completely

To bend the body (鞠躬) and spend oneself utterly (尽瘁). The line is from Zhuge Liang's second memorial before marching north: your servant will bow himself to the task and give out his whole strength, and stop only at death — and whether it ends in success or failure is not something his foresight can...

Heroically reversing catastrophic situation

Literal: Pull back raging tides

Han Yu, in the piece usually called On the Advancement of Learning, has a student praise his teacher for damming the hundred rivers and turning back the wild wave (狂澜) after it has already broken — 回狂澜于既倒. The four characters used today are a later compression of that line. To use force (力) to haul ...

Handle everything with practised ease

Literal: Left right meet springs

This comes from the Mencius, which says that one who has gone deep in learning will find, reaching left or right, that he meets the source — 取之左右逢其原. Turning either way (左右) he encounters (逢) the spring (源). The claim is specific: this ease is earned by depth, and is what mastery feels like from ins...