8 Chinese Idioms About Revenge & Retribution

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...

Success after long preparation

Literal: Thick accumulation thin launch

This is from Su Shi of the Song dynasty, who advised a friend to observe widely but take sparingly, to accumulate thickly and release thinly — 博观而约取，厚积而薄发. Deep (厚) accumulation (积) should issue in slight (薄) output (发). The counsel is against publishing early and often: what is put out should be a ...

Endure hardship for future success

Literal: Sleep on firewood, taste gall

Goujian of Yue, beaten and made to serve Fuchai of Wu, was let home and set about not forgetting it. The Records of the Grand Historian describes what he did: he hung a gall bladder (胆) where he sat, and looked up at it whenever he sat or lay down, and tasted (尝) it before every meal. The brushwood ...

Actions cannot be undone

Literal: Spilled water hard to recover

This descends from the story of Jiang Ziya, whose wife left him during his years of poverty and sought to return once he had risen. He poured a basin of water on the ground and invited her to gather it up. Water once overturned (覆水) cannot be recovered (难收). The story is unsentimental about the asym...

Accumulated evil deeds ripe for punishment

Literal: The string of evil deeds filled to the brim

This descends from the Book of Documents, where the crimes of the last Shang king are said to be strung together and full — the image is of evils (恶) threaded on a cord like coins until the string (贯) is full (满盈). The metaphor is quantitative and final: it implies a reckoning is now due, not merely...

Sincerely admit fault and accept consequences

Literal: Carry thorns request punishment

The Records of the Grand Historian tells how the general Lian Po, resentful that the diplomat Lin Xiangru had been promoted above him, repeatedly sought to humiliate him. Lin avoided every confrontation, explaining that if Zhao's two most capable servants fought each other, only Qin would profit. Wh...

Reap what one sows; suffer consequences

Literal: Self eat its fruit

To eat (食) the fruit (果) of one's own (自) tree (其). The metaphor is agricultural and its force lies in the ownership: the fruit is not a punishment sent from outside but the thing that grew from what was planted, so nobody has to be blamed for the outcome arriving. Chinese uses it with satisfaction ...

Be furious beyond control

Literal: Anger that cannot be suppressed

Anger (怒) that cannot (不可) be dammed (遏). 遏 is to block or stop a flow, so the metaphor gives rage volume and pressure, and the phrase reports that the containing failed rather than that it was never attempted. That detail is what keeps it usable for justified fury: the person tried. The reaction to...