10 Chinese Idioms About Fear & Anxiety

Overly fearful and suspicious

Literal: Wind sound crane call

After the rout at the Fei River, Fu Jian's enormous army broke and ran, and the History of the Jin says that the sound (声) of the wind (风) and the cry (唳) of a crane (鹤) were enough to convince the fleeing men that the Jin army was on them. They slept in the open and starved on the road, and most of...

Needlessly suspicious

Literal: Bow in cup snake shadow

Ying Shao's Comprehensive Meaning of Customs tells of a guest who saw a snake (蛇) in the wine he had been handed, drank it out of politeness, and went home ill for months. His host, working out where the man had been sitting, found a painted bow (弓) on the wall and its reflection (影) lying in the cu...

Courage under pressure

Literal: Face danger without fear

Meeting (临) danger (危) without (不) fear (惧). The formulation descends from the Zhuangzi's praise of the man who faces great peril without alarm, and it hardened into a standard term of commendation in later histories and biographies. What it denotes is composure under threat rather than absence of t...

Worry needlessly about impossible disasters

Literal: Qi person worries sky

The Liezi tells of a man (人) of Qi (杞) who feared (忧) the sky (天) would fall and the earth give way, and stopped eating and sleeping over it. A friend explained that the sky is only accumulated air and the earth accumulated solid matter, and both men were relieved — though Liezi then gives a third v...

Extreme paranoia sees threats everywhere

Literal: Grass trees all soldiers

At the Battle of the Fei River in 383 CE, Fu Jian of the Former Qin led an enormous army against the far smaller forces of the Eastern Jin. Surveying the Jin lines from a city wall, he mistook the grass (草) and trees (木) on distant Bagong Mountain for massed soldiers (兵), taking the entire hillside ...

Rush eagerly to be first, not last

Literal: Compete first fear last

The competitive atmosphere of the Han Dynasty imperial court gave birth to this phrase describing the twin drives of striving to be first (争先) while fearing to be last (恐后). Court historians noted how this combination of ambition and anxiety drove official behavior. Tang Dynasty observers saw the sa...

Constant dread; unable to stop worrying

Literal: Lift heart hang gall

The heart (心) hoisted up (提) and the gall bladder (胆) left swinging (吊). Chinese physiology puts courage in the gall, so the phrase names both organs of nerve as displaced at once — it is a description of the body, not of the thoughts. That is what separates it from ordinary worry. It describes sust...

Completely free from worry or concern

Literal: High pillow no worry

In the Strategies of the Warring States, Feng Xuan tells Lord Mengchang that a wily rabbit has three burrows and only just escapes with its life, and that with one refuge his lord 未得高枕而卧, cannot yet sleep on a high pillow (高枕). He builds the other two, and then tells him he may 高枕为乐, take his ease. ...

Worry about the home front left behind

Literal: Backward glance's worry

The worry (忧) that comes from looking back (后顾). The image is military and precise: a commander who must keep glancing behind at an unsecured rear cannot commit to what is in front of him, so the phrase names a specific tax on effectiveness rather than anxiety in general. It is most often used in th...

False alarm; scare for nothing

Literal: Empty fright for nothing

An empty (虚) fright (惊), one (一) entire scene (场) of it. 场 is the measure word for a performance or a bout of weather, and using it here is the joke: the fear was a complete production, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and nothing behind it. That is why relief and a little embarrassment arrive...