10 Chinese Idioms About Pride & Arrogance

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...

Deceive by substitution

Literal: Steal beam swap pillar

This is the twenty-fifth of the Thirty-Six Stratagems: stealing (偷) the beams (梁) and swapping (换) the pillars (柱) while the building still stands. The substitution is made inside a structure that keeps its outward form, so that nothing appears to have changed until weight is put on it. A quiet swap...

Miss big picture

Literal: Leaf blocks eye

This descends from the Heguanzi, which observes that a single leaf before the eyes hides the mountain, and two beans in the ears hide the thunder — 一叶蔽目，不见泰山. One (一) leaf (叶) blocks (障) the eye (目) not because it is large but because it is close. The obstruction is trivial and the loss of view is t...

Make a gift of something that isn't yours

Literal: Borrow flower offer Buddha

The Buddhist life of the Buddha's former births has the young Sumedha, wanting to make an offering to the buddha Dipankara and owning nothing, buy flowers from a girl who gives them on condition that she share the merit. Borrowing flowers (借花) to offer to the Buddha (献佛) is therefore not condemned i...

Contradict oneself

Literal: Spear shield contradict self

Han Feizi tells of a man of Chu selling weapons who said of his shields that nothing could pierce them, and of his spears that there was nothing they could not pierce. A bystander asked what would happen if one of his spears were used against one of his shields, and he had no answer. Hence spear (矛)...

Excellence that outshines all others

Literal: Out of the kind, above the gathered

This one comes from the Mencius, where Confucius is described as having come out from his kind and risen above the gathered crowd — 出于其类，拔乎其萃. To emerge (出) from one's category (类) and stand above (拔) the assembly (萃) is not to be better at the same thing but to be no longer comparable. Somebody who...

Creating unnecessary troubles for oneself

Literal: Mediocre person self-disturbs

This is from the New Book of Tang, on the official Lu Xiangxian, who held that the world is fundamentally without trouble and that mediocre people (庸人) stir it up (自扰) into vexation. The diagnosis is unkind and specific: the difficulty is manufactured, and manufactured by the person now complaining ...

Evenly matched with neither superior

Literal: Not mutually up down

Not (不) mutually (相) above and below (上下). Chinese ranks by verticality, so denying both directions denies the ranking itself — the claim is not that two things are similar but that no order can be established between them. Competitors, candidates and rival products, and it is genuinely neutral, whi...

Extremely arrogant; look down on everyone

Literal: No person in one's eyes

No (无) person (人) in (中) the eye (目). The construction is precise and unkind: other people are not being looked down on, they are not registering at all, which is a stage beyond contempt. That is what makes it a strong accusation in Chinese — it denies the person any relationship with those around t...

Be domineering and arrogant

Literal: Point with the chin, order with a look

颐 is the lower jaw and cheek; to point with it (指) and to command (使) by 气 — the air or expression on the face, not the breath — is to give orders without troubling to speak. The picture is exact and unpleasant — a lift of the chin, an audible sigh, and somebody moves. What the phrase objects to is ...