10 Chinese Idioms About Learning From Mistakes

Study extremely hard

Literal: Hang beam stab thigh

Two men, two methods. Sun Jing, of the Han, tied his hair to the roof beam (悬梁) so that nodding off would pull him upright. Su Qin, generations earlier, had been sent home from Qin in disgrace after ten memorials went unread, and read through the night with an awl beside him, stabbing (刺) his own th...

Small problems cause disaster

Literal: Ant holes break dike

The Han Feizi observes that a dyke a thousand zhang long is breached through the burrow of ants and crickets. An ant's (蚁) hole (穴) ruins (坏) the dyke (堤) not by being large but by being ignored while it is small, and the passage is advice to rulers about attending to minor faults early. The saying ...

All theory no practice

Literal: Discuss war on paper

Zhao Kuo had his father's books by heart and could out-argue him on tactics; his father said that war is a matter of life and death and the boy spoke of it far too easily. Qin's agents spread word that the only Zhao general they feared was Zhao Kuo, Zhao replaced the cautious Lian Po with him, and a...

Live as a recluse in the wild

Literal: Pillow stream rinse stone

Sun Chu, meaning to say he would pillow on stones and rinse in the stream (枕石漱流) — the standard image of the recluse — got it out backwards as pillowing on the stream (枕流) and rinsing with stones (漱石). Asked by Wang Ji how a stream could be a pillow or a stone a mouthwash, he answered without pausin...

Accept without proper understanding

Literal: Swallow dates whole

Someone was told that pears are good for the teeth and bad for the spleen, and jujubes good for the spleen and bad for the teeth. He proposed to chew pears without swallowing them and to swallow (吞) jujubes (枣) whole (囫囵) without chewing — at which point, the Chan collection notes, he has understood...

Ineffective indirect solution

Literal: Scratch itch through boot

To scratch (搔) an itch (痒) through (隔) the boot (靴). The image comes out of Chan writing, where it describes teaching that circles a matter without touching it. Everything about the action is correct except the one thing that matters, which is contact — and the phrase is precise that the effort is r...

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...

Failed imitation lacking understanding

Literal: Dongshi imitates Xishi's frown

The Zhuangzi says that Xi Shi, sick at heart, went frowning through her village, and that a plain woman of the same village saw it and thought it lovely — so she went home and did it too, clutching her breast and frowning as she walked. The rich shut their doors; the poor took their families and lef...

Mistaking partial knowledge for complete wisdom

Literal: Blind person touches elephant

A king had blind (盲) men (人) brought to feel (摸) an elephant (象) and say what it was: the one who got the tusk said a radish, the ear a winnowing basket, the leg a pillar, the tail a rope — and none of them was inventing anything. The parable comes into Chinese with the Buddhist canon. Its sharpness...

Rigidly following outdated methods

Literal: Go by the drawing to find the horse

Mei Fu, memorialising the Han throne about how it chose officials, said that looking for able men by the current method was like consulting Bo Le's diagram and expecting to buy a thoroughbred in the market. The story behind the image is older than its famous telling: a Tang collection already has Bo...