10 Chinese Idioms About Bold Decisions & Taking Risks

All-in risk

Literal: Stake everything on one throw

The History of Song records the slander that Wang Qinruo laid before Emperor Zhenzong about Kou Zhun, who had pushed the emperor to the front at the Chanyuan campaign: a gambler down to his last stake (孤注) throws (掷) everything on one cast, and Your Majesty was that stake. The accusation worked and ...

Commit with no retreat

Literal: Break pots sink boats

In 207 BCE Xiang Yu took his army across the river to relieve Julu, and then had the boats (舟) sunk (沉) and the cooking pots (釜) smashed (破), keeping three days' rations and nothing else. The Records of the Grand Historian is explicit that this was done to show the troops they would die rather than ...

Turn the enemy's own plot against him

Literal: Take his plan and go along with it

To take (将) the plan (计) and proceed by (就) that plan (计). The construction is deliberately circular, and the tactic it names is more specific than a counter-strategy: you do not block the opponent's scheme, you let it run and arrange for its success to be your success. That requires knowing the pla...

Leadership by action

Literal: Self ahead of the soldiers

Self (身) ahead of (先) the soldiers (士卒). The phrase belongs to the historical literature of command and describes a specific and verifiable thing: the officer physically in front of the line, taking the first risk rather than directing from behind it. Chinese has kept it almost intact for modern man...

Grassroots uprising

Literal: Raise pole and rise

Jia Yi's essay on the failings of Qin describes the rising of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang: they cut wood for weapons and raised (揭) bamboo poles (竿) for banners, and so (而) rose (起), and the empire answered like a shadow. The detail is the whole point — the rebellion that toppled the first empire began ...

An inside accomplice working with an outside force

Literal: Inside support outside cooperation

Those inside (里) answer (应) and those outside (外) join them (合) — the pincer in which a siege is broken by a gate opened from within. It appears in Yuan drama and belongs to the vocabulary of military plotting. Modern use has kept the structure and lost the walls: it now describes any operation requ...

Punish to deter others

Literal: Kill one warn a hundred

Yin Wengui, taking up a difficult post, opened by prosecuting the single most protected criminal in the district rather than the easiest, and executed him. The Book of Han reports that the rest gave no further trouble. Killing (杀) one (一) to caution (儆) a hundred (百) is a statement about audience: t...

Youthful potential

Literal: The later-born are to be held in awe

Confucius said that those born later (后生) are to be held in awe (可畏) — how do we know that the ones coming will not equal the present? The second half of the passage is usually left out and is worth having: if a man reaches forty or fifty and has still not been heard of, then he is not worth fearing...

Rested against the exhausted

Literal: Conserve energy, wait for fatigue

Sun Tzu's chapter on manoeuvre lists the pairings: meet the distant with the near, the tired with the rested, the hungry with the fed. This is the second of them — using (以) ease (逸) to await (待) exhaustion (劳) — and it is the fourth of the Thirty-Six Stratagems. The essential point is that the adva...

Held back from striking by fear of collateral damage

Literal: Throw at the rat, but fear for the vessel

Jia Yi, arguing that senior officials should not be punished like common criminals, quoted a village proverb: you want to throw something at the rat (投鼠) but you think of the vessel (忌器) it is sitting beside. The Book of Han preserves the argument. The phrase names the specific paralysis of having a...