10 Chinese Idioms About Chess, Go & Strategy Games

Foresee big from small signs

Literal: See small know large

The Han Feizi observes that the sage sees (见) the minute (微) and thereby knows what is sprouting, sees the beginning and thereby knows the end — to catch the small sign is to know (知) the large development (著) it precedes. The skill named is not prediction but attention: the evidence was there the w...

Have clear plan beforehand

Literal: Bamboo ready in heart

This descends from Su Shi's account of the painter Wen Tong of the Northern Song, who held that to paint bamboo (竹) one must first have the finished bamboo complete within the breast (胸有成竹) — and then work fast, before the image fades. The idiom is about the completeness of the mental picture, not a...

Plan strategy carefully

Literal: Work the counting rods in the command tent

Liu Bang, asked why he had won the empire when Xiang Yu was the better soldier, named three men he could not equal. Of Zhang Liang he said: 运筹帷幄之中，决胜千里之外 — turning the counting rods inside the tent curtains (帷幄), he decides victory a thousand li away. The Records of the Grand Historian keeps the spe...

Overcome all obstacles

Literal: Cut thorns break brambles

The History of the Later Han records Emperor Guangwu presenting Feng Yi to his court as the man who had been his registrar when he first raised troops: 为吾披荆棘，定关中 — he cut through the thorns for me and settled the land within the passes. The four-character idiom grew out of that sentence, adding 斩, t...

Plan far ahead

Literal: Deep plan far thought

Jia Yi uses it in his essay on the faults of Qin, contrasting the rebel Chen She with the men of the earlier age: he had not their deep (深) planning (谋) or their far (远) reckoning (虑), and yet the empire fell to him. The pairing sets two dimensions against each other, depth and distance, and Chinese...

Advance methodically with caution

Literal: Each step make camp

At every step (步步) making (为) a camp (营). The phrase belongs to the vocabulary of vernacular military fiction rather than to any surviving manual, and it describes a specific and slow method: advance a short distance, fortify, secure the supply line behind you, and only then advance again. Its point...

Achieve secretly through misdirection

Literal: Secretly cross Chencang

Shut into Hanzhong in 206 BCE, Liu Bang took Han Xin's plan and came back out 从故道, by the old road, to fall on Zhang Han at Chencang. That is all the Records of the Grand Historian says. The decoy everyone knows — men set to conspicuously rebuilding the burnt plank roads while the army went another ...

Prioritize minor over fundamental matters

Literal: Root branch reversed position

Root (本) and tip (末) put in reversed (倒) position (置). The botanical pair is one of the most productive in Chinese: 本 is the base of the trunk and 末 the outer twigs, and the whole vocabulary of priorities is built on it. What the phrase names is not disorder but inversion — the secondary thing is re...

Moderation in all things

Literal: Excess equals deficiency

Zigong asked Confucius which of two disciples was the better; one went too far and one fell short. Asked whether going too far was therefore better, Confucius answered 过犹不及 — overshooting (过) is just like (犹) falling short (不及). The point is that they are the same kind of error, not that one is pref...

Beyond comprehension or explanation

Literal: Cannot be thought discussed

Not (不) able to be (可) thought (思) or spoken (议). The phrase is Buddhist and technical in origin, describing what lies beyond the reach of conceptual thought and language — the standard Chinese rendering of the Sanskrit acintya. That is a strong claim, and ordinary use has worn it down considerably:...