10 Chinese Idioms About Gold & Treasure (金)

Extremely popular

Literal: Doorway busy as market

Zou Ji persuaded King Wei of Qi that everyone around him had a reason to flatter him, and the king proclaimed rewards for anyone who would name his faults. At first the gate and courtyard (门庭) were as crowded as a market (若市). After some months people still came, but only now and then; after a full ...

Words carry great weight

Literal: Words heavy as nine cauldrons

The nine bronze cauldrons cast by Yu were the physical emblem of the mandate, passed from dynasty to dynasty and impossibly heavy. The Records of the Grand Historian gives the phrase its setting: after Mao Sui talked Chu into an alliance, the Lord of Pingyuan said that Mao's single visit had made Zh...

Unity creates strength

Literal: Many wills make wall

This architectural metaphor shows how many wills (众志) can form (成) an impenetrable wall (城), drawing from ancient Chinese defensive architecture. It gained significance during the Warring States period when city walls required massive coordinated effort to construct and defend. Historical records de...

Keep integrity without compromise

Literal: Keep right no flattery

To keep to (守) what is upright (正) and not (不) bend (阿). 阿 is the load-bearing character: it means to lean toward, to curry favour, to give someone the benefit they have not earned, and the whole phrase turns on refusing that particular motion rather than on virtue in the abstract. It belongs to the...

Keep promises faithfully

Literal: One promise thousand gold

Ji Bu of the early Han was reliable enough that a saying circulated in Chu: a hundred catties of gold are worth less than one promise (一诺) from Ji Bu — hence a promise worth a thousand (千) in gold (金). The Records of the Grand Historian preserves it. He is not Ji Zha of Wu, whose story about keeping...

Decadent luxury lifestyle

Literal: Paper drunk gold confused

A Song collection tells of the physician Meng Fu, who fitted out a small room at home with gilded furnishings and paper so bright it dazzled; a guest who dozed there said afterwards that resting in it left a man gold-dazed and paper-drunk — 此室暂憩，令人金迷纸醉. The gold (金) and the papered walls (纸) are lit...

Handle everything with practised ease

Literal: Left right meet springs

This comes from the Mencius, which says that one who has gone deep in learning will find, reaching left or right, that he meets the source — 取之左右逢其原. Turning either way (左右) he encounters (逢) the spring (源). The claim is specific: this ease is earned by depth, and is what mastery feels like from ins...

Success in theory not reality

Literal: Wealth on paper only

Wealth and rank (富贵) that exist on paper (纸上) and nowhere else. The phrase is patterned on 纸上谈兵 — "discussing warfare on paper," the phrase for Zhao Kuo, who had mastered the military texts and lost an army the moment he commanded one — and it borrows that construction's judgement wholesale: 纸上 mark...

Continuous flow; never-ending stream

Literal: River flows without ceasing

Rivers (川) flowing (流) without (不) pause (息). The line is from the Thousand Character Classic, which generations of children learned by heart, so it reaches most Chinese speakers already familiar. 息 is to rest or to breathe, so what is denied is any interval at all. Traffic and crowds above all — th...

Teach anyone, whatever their station

Literal: Provide education without discrimination

In teaching (教) there are (有) no (无) categories (类). Confucius said it in a society where 类 meant birth and rank, so the claim was substantive rather than pious: he declined to sort applicants by where they came from, and his students included the poor and the disreputable. It remains the standard C...