10 Chinese Idioms About Truth & Reality

Practice what you know

Literal: Knowledge and action unite as one

Wang Yangming reached his enlightenment in exile at Longchang in Guizhou in 1508, and began teaching this doctrine the following year, when he was invited to head the academy at Guiyang: knowing (知) and acting (行) are one (合一) rather than two stages. His claim is stronger than an exhortation to put ...

Gather wisdom from many

Literal: Gather thoughts wide benefit

Zhuge Liang wrote to his staff that the purpose of a joint office was 集众思，广忠益, to gather the many thoughts and broaden the loyal benefit; the four-character form condenses it to gathering (集) ideas (思) in order to broaden (广) the advantage (益). Coming from a chancellor who could simply have issued o...

Open threats easier than hidden

Literal: An open spear is easy to dodge

The saying is a matched pair and only works whole: 明枪易躲，暗箭难防 — an open (明) spear (枪) is easy (易) to dodge (躲), a hidden arrow hard to guard against. It belongs to Yuan drama and later vernacular. The visible threat is named in order to be dismissed, so that the concealed one can be the point, and Ch...

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...

Hope appears in darkness

Literal: Dark willows bright flowers

This comes from Lu You's Visiting a Village West of the Mountains, of the Southern Song: 山重水复疑无路，柳暗花明又一村 — where the hills fold and the streams double back and there seems to be no road, the willows darken (柳暗) and the flowers brighten (花明), and there is another village. The turn arrives at the mome...

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...

Stay humble and open

Literal: Empty heart like valley

The Daodejing describes the man of old as being, among other things, open as a valley. A chest (怀) held empty (虚) like (若) a valley (谷) takes in whatever comes down into it, and the emptiness is a capacity rather than a lack. Chinese moral vocabulary is consistent about this: the chest is where tole...

Return something perfect

Literal: Return jade to Zhao complete

Qin offered fifteen cities for Zhao's famous jade disc, and everyone understood the cities would never be handed over. Lin Xiangru carried the jade (璧) to Qin, watched the king pass it round his court without a word about payment, and said there was a flaw he would point out — got it back into his o...

Create effortlessly from mastery

Literal: Casually pluck it up

Reaching out casually (信手) and plucking up (拈来) exactly the right thing, without hunting for it. The phrase itself is Chan Buddhist — a monk's verse in the Jingde Records has 信手拈来草, taking up whatever grass comes to hand — and Song and Jin critics borrowed it for Su Shi, whose allusions seemed never...

Maintain perfect dignified composure

Literal: Neither humble nor proud

Neither (不) cringing (卑) nor (不) overbearing (亢). Both halves name a failure of bearing under a difference in rank, and the phrase describes holding the line exactly between them. That is why it belongs to situations with a power gradient — meeting a superior, negotiating from weakness, representing...