10 Profound Chinese Idioms About Life & Philosophy

Many twists and turns

Literal: One wave three turns

Wang Xizhi, writing on brush method, said that in making a single wave-stroke (一波) the brush turns three times (三折) — the long diagonal that ends a character is not one movement but three changes of direction, and a stroke drawn straight is dead. The phrase left calligraphy for narrative and now des...

Return to righteousness

Literal: Turn from wrong return to right

Turning away (改) from what is wrong (邪) and returning (归) to what is right (正). The force sits in 归: rightness is treated as the place a person came from and can go back to, not somewhere new they have to be argued into. Vernacular fiction and drama supply the phrase, and there it marks a moment rat...

Push far enough and it turns

Literal: Things at extreme reverse

When a thing (物) reaches its extreme (极) it must (必) turn back (反). The formula is put most plainly in the Lüshi Chunqiu, which argues that the ruler should not occupy the complete, the extreme or the full, because what is complete will be broken, what is extreme will reverse, and what is full will ...

Misfortune might be a blessing

Literal: Old man loses horse

The Huainanzi tells of a man living out by the frontier, known ever since as the Old Man of the Frontier — 塞翁, from 塞, a border pass, and 翁, an old man. His horse (马) was lost (失), simply ran off. His neighbours came to console him and he asked how they knew it was not good fortune; the horse return...

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...

Overestimate oneself

Literal: Small kingdom thinks itself great

Yelang (夜郎) was a small state on the southwestern frontier of the Han empire. The Records of the Grand Historian relates that when a Han envoy reached it, its king asked whether Yelang or Han was the larger — a question that makes sense only to someone who has never left his own valley. The phrase f...

Good and evil deeds repaid in kind

Literal: Cause and effect return

Cause (因), effect (果), and the returning repayment (报应). The vocabulary is Buddhist and entered Chinese with the translated sutras, bringing with it a moral mechanics quite different from the older Chinese idea of heaven's mandate: consequence here is impersonal, exact, and not necessarily settled w...

Value harmony above all

Literal: Value harmony as precious

This descends from the Analects, where Master You says that in the working of ritual, harmony (和) is what is precious (贵) — 礼之用，和为贵. The claim is more careful than it looks: harmony is the point of the forms, but he adds at once that harmony pursued without the forms will not stand. Modern usage adv...

Accept all with open mind

Literal: Sea accepts hundred rivers

The sea (海) takes in (纳) a hundred (百) rivers (川) and is still the sea — that is the whole argument, and it is why the image is the sea and not a lake. The line is Lin Zexu's, the first half of a couplet normally quoted whole: 海纳百川，有容乃大；壁立千仞，无欲则刚 — the sea admits a hundred rivers, and capacity is wh...

Gentle, nurturing influence

Literal: Spring wind and nurturing rain

This is from the Mencius, which counts among a teacher's modes the one who transforms a student as a timely rain does — the spring wind (春风) and the rain that transforms (化雨). Nothing is forced; the growth is the student's own, and the teacher supplies the conditions. It is reserved for education ra...