8 Chinese Idioms About Sadness & Sorrow

Surrounded by hostility

Literal: Chu songs from four sides

This poignant idiom originates from the final battle of Xiang Yu in 202 BCE. Surrounded by Han forces at Gaixia, Xiang Yu heard songs (歌) of his homeland Chu (楚) being sung from all four sides (四面), indicating his own people had surrendered to Liu Bang. The psychological warfare strategy proved deva...

Deeply and permanently affected

Literal: Carve bone inscribe heart

Cut (刻) into the bone (骨) and inscribed (铭) on the heart (心). 铭 is specifically the verb for casting an inscription into bronze, so both halves name permanent media, and what the phrase claims is that the impression cannot be worn away. Tang usage attaches it to gratitude — a debt too deep ever to b...

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...

To eagerly await someone or something

Literal: Gazing through autumn waters

This descends from drama and verse of the Yuan and after, where autumn water (秋水) is a standing figure for clear bright eyes. To look until the autumn waters are worn through (望穿) is to watch for someone so long and so hard that the eyes themselves give out. The hyperbole is about duration, and the ...

Everlasting; eternal

Literal: Heaven is long, earth is lasting

This idiom derives from Chapter 7 of the Daoist classic 'Tao Te Ching' (道德经) by Laozi: 'Heaven and earth are long-lasting.' The phrase uses the long-lasting (长) heaven (天) and enduring (久) earth (地) as metaphors for permanence and durability. It gained romantic connotations through Tang Dynasty poet...

Look worried and unhappy

Literal: Worried brows, bitter face

Worried (愁) brows (眉) and a bitter (苦) face (脸). 苦 is the taste, and using it of an expression is exact: the mouth of an unhappy person does what the mouth of somebody eating something bitter does. The phrase reports the face and leaves the cause open, which is why it so often turns up inside a ques...

Feel overwhelmed by greatness

Literal: Look up in awe and sigh

In the Zhuangzi, the Lord of the Yellow River, proud of his swollen autumn flood, travels east until he reaches the North Sea and can find no end to it. He turns his face about and 望洋向若而叹 — looks up in awe (望洋) toward Ruo, the sea god, and sighs (叹). The idiom adds 兴, to raise or set going, so the m...

Brief, fleeting appearance

Literal: Night flower appears once

The 昙花 is the night-blooming cereus, which opens after dark, holds for a few hours and is finished by morning. Buddhist writing had already used a flower appearing once (一现) as the figure for something that arrives so rarely that most people live and die without seeing it. Chinese kept the brevity a...