8 Chinese Idioms About Blessings in Disguise

Misfortune might be a blessing

Literal: Old man loses horse

The Huainanzi tells of a man living out by the frontier, known ever since as the Old Man of the Frontier — 塞翁, from 塞, a border pass, and 翁, an old man. His horse (马) was lost (失), simply ran off. His neighbours came to console him and he asked how they knew it was not good fortune; the horse return...

Fortune finally turns your way

Literal: Time comes and fortune turns

The hour arrives (时来) and the luck turns (运转). Both halves assume a wheel: fortune in this vocabulary is not distributed but cyclical, so a bad stretch is a position on the turn rather than a settled condition. That is the consolation being offered. It belongs to ordinary speech and to fortune-telli...

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...

Perfect moment of opportunity

Literal: Wind cloud gather meeting

Wind (风) and cloud (云) coming together (际会) at the same moment. The Book of Changes supplies the underlying image, where clouds follow the dragon and wind follows the tiger, so the meeting of the two is the sign of something considerable arriving. The phrase names the convergence rather than the eve...

Press on despite awareness of challenges

Literal: Know difficulty yet advance

To know (知) the difficulty (难) and advance (进) anyway. It is built as the deliberate opposite of 知难而退, withdrawing in the face of difficulty, and the pair is used against each other constantly in Chinese. What both share is the first half: the knowing is not in dispute, and the phrase specifically e...

Advance boldly through difficulty

Literal: Rapids bravely advance

To advance (进) bravely (勇) into the rapid current (急流). It exists as the deliberate counterpart of 急流勇退, withdrawing at the height of the rapids, and the two are used as a matched pair about careers. Where the retreat version praises knowing when to stop, this one praises pressing on precisely where...

Unlimited potential for future success

Literal: Boundless path ahead

The road ahead (前途) without (无) measure (量). 量 is capacity or a quantity measured out, so the claim is that no ceiling can be put on the future — which is why the phrase belongs to the young and sounds absurd applied to anyone whose career is largely behind them. It is standard in references and in ...

Two brothers of equal merit; now often said ironically

Literal: Difficult elder and younger brothers

This is from the Shishuo Xinyu, on the two sons of Chen Shi, of whom it was said that each was hard (难) to be the elder brother (兄) of and hard to be the younger brother (弟) of — neither could be ranked above the other. Read that way it is high praise. The character 难 was later taken in its other se...