10 Chinese Idioms About Deception & Clever Tricks

Exploit chaos

Literal: Muddy the water, grope for fish

The twentieth of the Thirty-Six Stratagems. Fish in clear water see the hand coming; stir the water (混水) and the fish (鱼) can be taken (摸) by feel. The stratagem's own emphasis is on the first half — the confusion is manufactured by the person who then profits from it — which is stronger than the En...

Used by others

Literal: Take chestnuts from fire

This one is not Chinese in origin. It comes from La Fontaine's fable of the monkey who flatters the cat into pulling (取) roasting chestnuts (栗) out of the fire (火中), eating each one as it arrives while the cat burns its paw for nothing. The story entered Chinese through translation and settled into ...

Benefit from others' conflict

Literal: Sit and collect fishing profits

Su Dai, dissuading Zhao from attacking Yan, told the king a story. A clam lay open on the bank; a snipe stabbed at its flesh and the shell closed on its beak. Each told the other it would die first, and while they held on a fisherman came along and took the pair. Qin, said Su Dai, is the fisherman. ...

Defy norms

Literal: Go against the way, act against the order

Wu Zixu, whose father and brother King Ping of Chu had executed, returned with a foreign army, found the king already dead, and had the corpse taken from its tomb and whipped. Reproached for it by an old friend, he answered in the words the Records of the Grand Historian preserves: my day is late an...

Skilled maneuvering

Literal: Long sleeves make for good dancing

Han Feizi's pairing is blunter than the idiom that came out of it: long sleeves (长袖) make for good dancing (善舞), plenty of money makes for good trading. His point was about advantage, not skill — the dancer looks better because of the costume. Modern usage has quietly shifted the credit to the perso...

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...

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...

Forced agreement

Literal: Treaty under the city walls

In 700 BCE Chu besieged the small state of Jiao, drew its soldiers outside the walls with a decoy of unescorted woodcutters, and destroyed them. The Zuo Zhuan records that Jiao was then made to swear a covenant (盟) beneath (下) its own walls (城). That is the specific meaning: not a treaty that is mer...

Strategic maneuvering

Literal: Vertical and horizontal alliances, opening and closing

纵 and 横 are the vertical and horizontal alliances of the Warring States — the north-south coalition against Qin and the east-west accommodation with it — and the men who built and broke them were professional persuaders. 捭 and 阖 mean to open and to close, from the manual attributed to Guiguzi, their...

Prepared clever strategy

Literal: Silk pouch ingenious plan

In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Zhuge Liang sends Zhao Yun to escort Liu Bei into enemy territory with three brocade pouches (锦囊), each holding a plan (妙计) and instructions on exactly when to open it. Each is opened at the appointed crisis and each works. The phrase describes a solution prepar...