故步自封

Pronunciation: gù bù zì fēng Literal meaning: Old steps, self-sealed in

Origin & Usage

The standard form writes the first character 故, meaning old or former — the old (故) steps (步) one keeps taking, with oneself (自) sealed in (封). It is very often miswritten 固步自封, since 固 means fixed and seems to fit, and the error is common enough in China to be worth knowing about. The image is a person walking a route they have walked before and building a wall around it. It criticises not caution but the refusal to look at anything outside a method that once worked, and it is standard in Chinese writing about companies and institutions that stopped adapting.

Examples

English: "The firm kept its 1990s process and watched every rival overtake it"

Chinese: 公司死守九十年代的流程，眼看着对手一个个超越