12 Delicious Chinese Idioms About Food & Eating

Shirk effort by preference

Literal: Love ease hate work

To love (好) ease (逸) and hate (恶) toil (劳). The two verbs are the point: this is not laziness as a failing of will but as a preference, something the phrase presents as the ordinary human default rather than a vice peculiar to the person being described. That makes it a diagnosis more than an insult...

Advantage from close connections

Literal: Pavilion close to water

Su Lin, a minor officer under Fan Zhongyan, was passed over while Fan promoted others around him, and presented a couplet instead of a complaint: 近水楼台先得月，向阳花木易为春 — the tower (楼台) nearest (近) the water (水) gets the moon first, and flowers facing the sun come to spring early. Fan took the point and pr...

Prepare before problems arise

Literal: Mend the windows before it rains

This one comes from the Book of Songs, where a bird strips mulberry roots to bind (绸缪) its window and door before (未) the rain (雨) comes. The bird is speaking after already losing its young, which gives the image its urgency: preparation is described by something that has learned the hard way. Note ...

Makes no sense

Literal: Cannot name its wonder

Something whose strangeness (妙) cannot (莫) be named (名). 妙 is the trap for learners: in Daoist writing it is the subtle and the marvellous, but the tone here is exasperated rather than reverent, and the speaker is not contemplating a mystery so much as failing to make sense of something absurd. Late...

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...

Make situation worse

Literal: Carry firewood to put out a fire

Su Dai argued against buying peace from Qin by ceding territory: serving Qin with land is like carrying (抱) firewood (薪) to put out (救) a fire (火) — while there is wood left, the fire will not go out. The Records of the Grand Historian keeps the argument, and Wei ceded the land anyway. The phrase na...

Gradual accumulation builds up

Literal: Days pile months gather

Piled up (积) by the day (日), accumulated (累) by the month (月). Its usefulness is that it names the timescale rather than the effort — what it describes is not diligence but duration. Chinese uses it in both directions, which is worth noticing. Skill and savings accumulate this way, and so do bad hab...

Bring trouble upon oneself

Literal: Draw fire burn self

To draw (引) the fire (火) and have it burn (烧) yourself (身). The phrase describes an action aimed outward that returns on the person who took it, and Chinese distinguishes it carefully from simple bad luck: the fire was fetched deliberately. It has a second and quite different use in political langua...

Small things build achievement

Literal: Gather sand make tower

The Lotus Sutra counts even children heaping sand into toy pagodas among the acts that lead toward buddhahood. Gathering (聚) sand (沙) makes (成) a tower (塔): no single grain matters, and the tower is nothing but grains. The teaching is deliberately generous, treating the smallest and least serious ef...

Observe troubles from safe distance

Literal: Watch fire from opposite shore

To watch (观) the fire (火) from across (隔) the bank (岸). It is the ninth of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, where the advice is precise: when the enemy's internal disorder is growing, do not intervene, because pressure from outside will unite them and waiting will let the split do the work. So the detachm...

Innocent bystanders suffer from others' problems

Literal: City gate catches fire

The full saying is 城门失火，殃及池鱼 — the city gate (城门) catches fire (失火) and the calamity reaches the fish in the moat, because the water is drawn off to fight it and the pond is left dry. The chain is what matters: the fish are not near the fire, are no part of the quarrel, and die of it anyway. The peo...

Be irresistibly drawn toward self-destruction

Literal: Flying moth rushes fire

Emperor Wu of Liang sent the official Dao Gai a teasing verse about the fact that his grandson was writing his memorials for him: the ink is ground to produce writing, the brush flies to make the letter, 如飞蛾之赴火，岂焚身之可吝 — like a moth (飞蛾) going into the flame, and what would be the use of grudging the...