10 Chinese Idioms About Betrayal & Broken Trust

Hide evil behind sweet words

Literal: Mouth honey belly sword

Li Linfu ran the Tang court for nineteen years by agreeing warmly with everyone and destroying them afterwards. The Comprehensive Mirror records the verdict of his contemporaries: Li Linfu has honey (蜜) in his mouth (口) and a sword (剑) in his belly (腹). The organs are not decorative — Chinese physio...

Hide malice behind smile

Literal: Hide knife in smile

This descends from accounts of Li Yifu, a chancellor under the Tang, who was mild in manner and unfailingly courteous, and who destroyed anyone who crossed him. Contemporaries said he carried a knife (刀) hidden (藏) inside (里) his smile (笑). It is also the tenth of the Thirty-Six Stratagems. The smil...

Quitting before completion

Literal: Abandon halfway through journey

In the Doctrine of the Mean, Confucius says that the noble person walks the way and gives up (废) half (半) way along the road (途) — and that he himself could not stop. The illustration usually told with it is Yue Yangzi's wife, who cut her half-woven cloth from the loom when he came home early from h...

Abandoning those who helped you

Literal: Cross river, dismantle bridge

The History of Yuan records the abolition of the examinations. Xu Youren had argued against it and lost, and was then placed at the head of the officials made to kneel and hear the edict read — he had himself entered office through those examinations. As they rose, a censor said to him: the vice-cou...

True nature eventually revealed

Literal: Fox's tail

In Chinese fox lore the fox that takes human form is betrayed by the one part of the disguise it cannot manage: the tail (尾巴). The phrase is used of the detail that gives someone away rather than of deception in general, and it usually appears in the construction 露出狐狸尾巴, to let the fox's tail show. ...

Superficial acquaintance without depth

Literal: Half-face acquaintance

This descends from the Book of Later Han, on Ying Feng, whose memory was such that a man glimpsed once at a half-open door was recognised by him years afterwards. A half-face (半面) acquaintance (之交) is therefore someone you have barely met — the phrase measures the thinness of the connection, not the...

Deserted and lifeless atmosphere

Literal: Cold cold quiet quiet

Li Qingzhao opens one of the most famous lyrics in the language with a run of doubled sounds — searching and searching, cold (冷冷) and clear (清清), desolate and grieving. She was writing as a refugee and a widow. The phrase keeps both halves of the sensation, temperature and silence, and it suits plac...

Glancing around in all directions; unable to settle

Literal: Look east, gaze west

Looking east (东张) and west (西望) — turning the head about instead of letting the gaze settle. It belongs to vernacular fiction, where it marks either distraction or furtiveness depending on the scene, and the reader is expected to tell which from context. Restless glancing about, often with the sugge...

Self-imposed restrictions; limiting oneself

Literal: Drawing ground as prison

Sima Qian, in the letter to Ren An written after his own mutilation, describes what a man of honour will do rather than face the officers: there are those for whom a circle drawn (画) on the ground (地) is a prison (为牢) they will not step out of, and a wooden figure of a jailer one they will not answe...

Practice what one preaches

Literal: Words and actions consistent

Words (言) and deeds (行) at one (一致). The Analects sets the standard it assumes — 君子欲讷于言而敏于行, the gentleman wishes to be halting in speech and quick in action — and the ordering matters: the remedy for a gap between the two is taken to be saying less, not achieving more. That is a distinctly Chinese ...