8 Chinese Idioms Every First Frost Fan Should Know

First Frost (难哄, Nán Hǒng) peaked at #1 on Netflix's global Chinese-language rankings in 2025, introducing millions of international viewers to a love story that felt unusually patient for a streaming romance. What makes the drama feel classical — even when its characters are texting on smartphones and arguing over gaming handles — is that it's following a structural grammar Chinese literature has been refining for two thousand years.

That grammar is stored in the language itself, in four-character idioms (成语, chéngyǔ) that compress entire narrative arcs into four syllables. Every major beat of Sang Yan and Wen Yifan's relationship has one. Here are the eight chengyu that quietly do the work.

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1. 青梅竹马 — "Green Plums, Bamboo Horse"

青梅竹马 (qīng méi zhú mǎ) describes two people who grew up together, usually a boy and a girl, whose connection feels pre-verbal and effortless because it predates self-consciousness.

The Origin

From a poem by Tang Dynasty master Li Bai (李白). He describes a childhood romance in which the boy rode around on a bamboo horse (竹马) and the girl picked green plums (青梅) by the gate. The phrase stuck — it's been the standard Chinese term for childhood sweethearts for twelve centuries.

In the Drama

Sang Yan and Wen Yifan aren't quite 青梅竹马 — they met as high school deskmates, not as children. But the drama deliberately borrows the emotional shape of the trope: two people who had something real before they had language for it, and whose reunion as adults is less falling in love than returning to love. Chinese audiences recognize the template. International audiences feel it without being able to name it.

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2. 一见钟情 — "Love at First Sight"

一见钟情 (yī jiàn zhōng qíng) is the chengyu for falling instantly. Literally: "one look, struck with love." It's one of the few Chinese idioms that has a near-perfect English equivalent — which is to say, the experience it names is genuinely universal.

The Nuance

Chinese poetic tradition tends to be suspicious of 一见钟情. Confucian-influenced romance values slow-built affection over instant recognition, and many classical stories treat love-at-first-sight as a trap or a test. But modern Chinese has embraced the phrase — especially after Republican-era literature and mid-20th-century cinema made it respectable.

In the Drama

Sang Yan's fall is 一见钟情, but it's played as memory, not as a live moment. We learn in flashback that he was already gone for her by the time she transferred into his class. The drama positions the audience after the instant and shows us its long echo — which is what the older Chinese tradition has always argued 一见钟情 actually is. Not the moment. The decades.

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3. 朝思暮想 — "Think in the Morning, Long in the Evening"

朝思暮想 (zhāo sī mù xiǎng) describes the mental state of someone whose thoughts return constantly to an absent person. Morning and evening — the chengyu covers the entire day, which is the point. You don't stop thinking.

The Phrase's Weight

朝 (morning) and 暮 (evening) are a classical parallelism common in poetry since the Book of Songs. When a chengyu uses this pair, it's invoking the entire sweep of a day, which implicitly means every day, which implicitly means as long as you remain apart.

In the Drama

Sang Yan's six years between high school and the reunion are 朝思暮想. The drama doesn't dwell on this — there's no flashback montage of him pining. What the drama does instead is trust the viewer to understand that of course he was thinking of her. He opened a bar named 加班 (Overtime). His gaming handle is 败降 (Defeated by Shuangjiang). His entire adult life is a footprint left by someone who never stopped thinking.

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4. 锲而不舍 — "Never Giving Up the Carving"

锲而不舍 (qiè ér bù shě) means to continue a difficult task without ever abandoning it. Originally from Xunzi (荀子), the 3rd-century BCE philosopher, who wrote that a carver who gives up will never finish a single inscription, but a carver who persists will eventually cut through gold and stone.

The Philosophical Weight

Xunzi used 锲而不舍 to argue against the Chinese cultural tendency to value natural talent (天赋) over sustained effort (努力). His position: persistence beats genius. The chengyu carries that argument for any reader who knows the source.

In the Drama

Sang Yan's entire courtship of Wen Yifan is 锲而不舍. He doesn't have a grand plan. He doesn't stage gestures. He simply doesn't stop — not after her initial coldness, not after discovering her trauma, not after the sleepwalking episodes. The chengyu is the opposite of a love-bomb. It's the love version of Xunzi's carver: day after day, cutting through stone that the rest of the world gave up on.

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5. 相濡以沫 — "Moistening Each Other with Saliva"

相濡以沫 (xiāng rú yǐ mò) is one of the most moving chengyu in Chinese. It comes from Zhuangzi (庄子), the 4th-century BCE Daoist philosopher. Two fish are stranded in a drying pool. Unable to reach water, they moisten each other with their own saliva (沫) to survive.

The Dark Beauty

Zhuangzi used the image to complicate romance. In his telling, it would be better for the two fish to be back in the river, ignoring each other, than to be stuck in a dying pond making a heroic virtue of mutual suffering. But Chinese culture embraced the image as positive — the willingness to give what little you have to keep another person alive became a marker of true love.

In the Drama

Sang Yan and Wen Yifan are 相濡以沫. Neither is whole when they meet again as adults. He has his own quiet solitude, she has her trauma, and what they offer each other is not rescue but presence. They moisten each other with saliva. It isn't a river. It's enough.

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6. 情投意合 — "Feelings and Intentions Aligned"

情投意合 (qíng tóu yì hé) describes two people whose emotional inclinations (情) and practical intentions (意) are in sync. Not just attraction. Agreement about how to live.

Why It Matters

Chinese romance traditionally distinguishes between 情 (feeling, the heart) and 意 (intention, the will). A relationship can have one without the other. 情投意合 is when both meet — the feeling and the plan are the same.

In the Drama

Wen Yifan and Sang Yan begin as roommates of convenience, but what the drama is building toward is 情投意合 — not just affection, but a shared understanding of how to move forward. He isn't asking her to trust him immediately. She isn't asking him to wait forever. They are gradually, carefully, aligning their feelings and their intentions into a single direction. That's the chengyu for a good ending.

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7. 海枯石烂 — "Oceans Dry, Stones Crumble"

海枯石烂 (hǎi kū shí làn) is a romantic vow. If my love for you is to end, the seas would have to dry up and the stones would have to crumble first. It's hyperbolic by design — the lover is saying it won't end.

The Classical Lineage

The phrase appears in Tang Dynasty poetry and Song Dynasty ci (词) lyrics, usually as the climax of a romantic promise. It's close to the Western "until the end of time," but with more geological weight.

In the Drama

Sang Yan's 海枯石烂 line isn't actually fourteen characters long. It's two: 我不走 (wǒ bù zǒu). "I'm not leaving." When a C-drama gives its hero two syllables where the classical tradition expects an ornate vow, it is doing something specific — it is trusting the audience to hear the whole vow under the two words. 海枯石烂 is the full sentence. 我不走 is what it sounds like when a modern man with a damaged woman decides the silence will do.

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8. 白头偕老 — "Together Until White Hair"

白头偕老 (bái tóu xié lǎo) is the traditional Chinese blessing for a couple. May you grow old together, your hair turning white side by side. It's what's said at weddings, inscribed on wedding gifts, and quoted at anniversaries.

Not Just Longevity

The phrase isn't just about living a long time. 偕 means together, alongside. The blessing is specifically about the walking side by side part — the daily, mundane, unglamorous habit of being two people who stayed in the same life.

In the Drama

First Frost doesn't end at a wedding. It doesn't need to. 白头偕老 is the chengyu that hovers over the final episodes implicitly — not as a promise made, but as a direction both characters have decided to walk. He isn't coaxing her into a wedding. He's coaxing her into the habit of walking alongside him. The wedding, if it happens, is incidental. The walking is the thing.

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Bonus: The Hidden Love Connection

One chengyu doesn't have a blog page but deserves a mention: 手足情深 (shǒu zú qíng shēn) — "hand and foot, deep feeling." The phrase describes the bond between siblings, using the image of limbs to make the point: siblings are literally extensions of the same body.

Sang Yan is Sang Zhi's older brother — Sang Zhi being the heroine of Hidden Love (偷偷藏不住), the companion drama by the same author Zhu Yi (竹已). The Sang siblings share scenes in both shows, and the warmth between them is 手足情深 in action: protective, teasing, unshowy.

For readers who have watched both dramas, the cameos are a reminder that Zhu Yi is building a larger fictional family. For readers who haven't, Hidden Love is a lighter starting point — and a natural continuation from First Frost.

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Why This Matters for Understanding the Drama

First Frost looks like a modern Netflix romance, but its structure is almost entirely classical. Every major beat has a chengyu underneath:

• 青梅竹马 and 一见钟情 — the remembered beginning, the instant recognition
• 朝思暮想 and 锲而不舍 — the long absence, the patient return
• 相濡以沫 — the hard seasons carried together
• 情投意合 — the alignment of feeling and intention
• 海枯石烂 and 白头偕老 — the unspoken forever, the side-by-side walking

A Western romance might rely on grand declarations or dramatic reversals. First Frost relies on chengyu — on compression, on implication, on trusting the audience to hear the full arc in half a sentence. That's why the drama feels patient even when its characters barely speak. The silence is full of classical Chinese.

Subtitles will never fully translate this. But now you know what's underneath.

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Continue exploring: Browse Chinese sayings about love — the poetic lineage these chengyu belong to. Or Chinese sayings about patience, the deeper Chinese virtue underneath 锲而不舍.

Featured Chinese idioms: 青梅竹马 — Childhood sweethearts, 一见钟情 — Love at first sight, 朝思暮想 — Longing day and night, 锲而不舍 — Never giving up, 相濡以沫 — Mutual support in hardship, 情投意合 — Hearts aligned, 海枯石烂 — Until oceans dry and stones crumble, 白头偕老 — Together to white hair. See our Chinese proverbs hub and all 1,000+ Chinese idioms.