8 Chinese Idioms About Money, Wealth & Prosperity

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 ...

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...

Commit with no retreat

Literal: Break pots sink boats

In 207 BCE Xiang Yu took his army across the river to relieve Julu, and then had the boats (舟) sunk (沉) and the cooking pots (釜) smashed (破), keeping three days' rations and nothing else. The Records of the Grand Historian is explicit that this was done to show the troops they would die rather than ...

Value time preciously

Literal: Value time like gold

To guard (守) time (时) as though it were gold (如金). This is a modern four-character phrase, not a classical idiom: it has no source text, and it is formed on the pattern of the much older 一寸光阴一寸金 ("an inch of time is an inch of gold") and 惜时如金. What it adds to that older sentiment is 守 — the sense is...

Add crucial finishing touch

Literal: Dot dragon's eyes

Zhang Sengyou painted four dragons on a temple wall in Jinling and left them without pupils, saying that if he dotted the eyes they would fly away. Pressed, he dotted two. Thunder split the wall and those two went up into the cloud; the two he had left blind were still there. The account is in Zhang...

Offer modest view to inspire better

Literal: Throw brick attract jade

Zhao Gu was the better poet, and Chang Jian wanted a poem out of him. Knowing Zhao Gu would visit the Lingyan Temple, Chang Jian went first and wrote two lines on the wall; Zhao Gu came, saw them, and completed the quatrain. Chang Jian's couplet was much the weaker, which is the point of the anecdot...

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...

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...