10 Chinese Idioms About Wealth & Prosperity

Find value among worthless

Literal: Sift sand pick gold

The Grades of the Poets quotes Xie Hun comparing two writers: Pan Yue's verse is brilliant as unrolled brocade, fine everywhere, while Lu Ji's is like parting (披) the sand (沙) to pick out (拣) gold (金) — treasure turns up, and you go through a great deal to reach it. Liu Zhiji later used the four-cha...

Have great vision

Literal: Hills and valleys in heart

Hills (丘) and ravines (壑) already inside the chest (胸有). The phrase belongs to landscape painting, where the whole terrain was expected to exist in the painter's mind before the brush touched the silk — the same claim 胸有成竹 makes about a stalk of bamboo, and the two are near neighbours. What distingu...

Perfect peaceful place

Literal: Peach spring beyond world

Tao Yuanming's account of the peach (桃) blossom spring (源) has a fisherman follow a stream through a grove, squeeze through a gap in the rock and come out among people who fled the wars of Qin: 乃不知有汉，无论魏晋 — they do not know there was a Han, still less Wei and Jin. He is entertained, leaves, marks th...

Decadent luxury lifestyle

Literal: Paper drunk gold confused

A Song collection tells of the physician Meng Fu, who fitted out a small room at home with gilded furnishings and paper so bright it dazzled; a guest who dozed there said afterwards that resting in it left a man gold-dazed and paper-drunk — 此室暂憩，令人金迷纸醉. The gold (金) and the papered walls (纸) are lit...

Embrace diverse ideas inclusively

Literal: Gather all store together

In 进学解 Han Yu lists what a good physician keeps in store: fine drugs and coarse ones, jade fragments and cinnabar alongside ox urine and the skin of a broken drum, 俱收并蓄，待用无遗 — gathering (收) everything (兼) and storing (蓄) it up together (并), so that nothing is missing when the moment comes. He then t...

Handle everything with practised ease

Literal: Left right meet springs

This comes from the Mencius, which says that one who has gone deep in learning will find, reaching left or right, that he meets the source — 取之左右逢其原. Turning either way (左右) he encounters (逢) the spring (源). The claim is specific: this ease is earned by depth, and is what mastery feels like from ins...

Success in theory not reality

Literal: Wealth on paper only

Wealth and rank (富贵) that exist on paper (纸上) and nowhere else. The phrase is patterned on 纸上谈兵 — "discussing warfare on paper," the phrase for Zhao Kuo, who had mastered the military texts and lost an army the moment he commanded one — and it borrows that construction's judgement wholesale: 纸上 mark...

Sophisticated work appreciated by few

Literal: Tune high harmony few

Song Yu, asked by the King of Chu why so many people spoke ill of him, answered with a singer who came to Ying, the Chu capital. He began with common songs and thousands joined in; as the pieces grew more refined the number who could sing along fell to a few dozen, and then to a handful. The loftier...

Continuous flow; never-ending stream

Literal: River flows without ceasing

Rivers (川) flowing (流) without (不) pause (息). The line is from the Thousand Character Classic, which generations of children learned by heart, so it reaches most Chinese speakers already familiar. 息 is to rest or to breathe, so what is denied is any interval at all. Traffic and crowds above all — th...

Teach anyone, whatever their station

Literal: Provide education without discrimination

In teaching (教) there are (有) no (无) categories (类). Confucius said it in a society where 类 meant birth and rank, so the claim was substantive rather than pious: he declined to sort applicants by where they came from, and his students included the poor and the disreputable. It remains the standard C...