15 Most Searched Chinese Idioms with English Translations

Help in time of need

Literal: Send coal in snow

To send (送) charcoal (炭) into (中) the snow (雪). What the image fixes is timing rather than generosity: charcoal is cheap, and in a snowstorm it is the only thing worth having, so the value of the gift is entirely in when it arrives. Chinese sets it directly against 锦上添花, adding flowers to brocade, a...

Learn many from one example

Literal: Raise one reflect three

Confucius, in the Analects, said he did not go on teaching a man who, shown one corner, could not come back (反) with the other three (三) — 举一隅不以三隅反，则不复也. The image is a square: you are given one corner and expected to supply the rest. It is a statement about what a teacher owes and what a student mu...

Remember your roots

Literal: Drink water think source

Yu Xin, writing in the sixth century, put it as 落其实者思其树，饮其流者怀其源 — who eats the fruit thinks of the tree, who drinks from the stream remembers its source. The four-character form keeps the second half: drink (饮) the water (水), think (思) of the source (源). It concerns debts owed rather than gratitude ...

Console with false hopes

Literal: Gaze at plums to quench thirst

On the march, Cao Cao's army lost the track to water and the whole force was parched. He announced that a great plum wood lay ahead (望梅), heavy with fruit, sour and sweet enough to kill (止) a thirst (渴). Every mouth in the ranks began to water, and on that they reached the next source. The New Accou...

Have clear plan beforehand

Literal: Bamboo ready in heart

This descends from Su Shi's account of the painter Wen Tong of the Northern Song, who held that to paint bamboo (竹) one must first have the finished bamboo complete within the breast (胸有成竹) — and then work fast, before the image fades. The idiom is about the completeness of the mental picture, not a...

Adopt the customs of where you are

Literal: Enter village follow customs

Enter (入) the district (乡), follow (随) its customs (俗). The older formulation, about entering a place and going by its rules, is in the Zhuangzi, and the four-character version is fixed in Chan collections. It is worth noticing what it does not say: nothing about approving of the customs, only about...

Contentment with what one has brings happiness

Literal: Know enough constant happiness

The Daodejing supplies the thought in several places: there is no calamity greater than not knowing when one has enough, and the contentment that knows enough (知足) is enough for good (常乐). The claim is stronger than an argument for modest living — it is that sufficiency is a judgement rather than a ...

Narrow-minded from limited experience

Literal: Frog at well bottom

In the Zhuangzi, a frog (蛙) at the bottom (底) of a broken well (井) boasts to a turtle of the Eastern Sea about the water reaching its armpits, the mud covering its feet, and how nothing else in the well can match it. The turtle tries to get in: its left foot is not yet inside before its right knee i...

Prepare before problems arise

Literal: Mend the windows before it rains

This one comes from the Book of Songs, where a bird strips mulberry roots to bind (绸缪) its window and door before (未) the rain (雨) comes. The bird is speaking after already losing its young, which gives the image its urgency: preparation is described by something that has learned the hard way. Note ...

Present to wrong audience

Literal: Play zither to cow

Gongming Yi played a refined melody to an ox, which went on grazing. He then played something imitating a gadfly and a lost calf, and the ox raised its tail and pricked its ears — the fault, the account observes, was not in the ox's hearing but in the mismatch. The story survives in a Han Buddhist a...

Borrow authority to intimidate

Literal: Fox uses tiger's power

A tiger caught a fox, and the fox said heaven had made it lord of the beasts, so eating it would be defying heaven — walk behind me and see whether anything dares stand its ground. The tiger followed, the animals fled, and the tiger concluded the fox had been telling the truth. The Strategies of the...

Showing amateur skills to masters

Literal: Wield an axe at Lu Ban's gate

Brandishing (弄) an axe (斧) at the gate (门) of Lu Ban (班), the legendary carpenter and patron of Chinese craftsmen. The image was already proverbial when a Ming poet, finding graffiti scrawled on Li Bai's grave, wrote that writing verse there was like wielding a great axe at Lu Ban's door. It is most...

Repeated lie becomes truth

Literal: Three people make tiger real

Pang Cong, about to leave Wei escorting a hostage prince to Handan, asked his king whether he would believe a man who reported a tiger (虎) in the marketplace. No. Two men? He would wonder. Three (三) men (人)? The king said he would believe it. There is no tiger in the marketplace, Pang Cong said, and...

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...

Exceptionally beautiful

Literal: Moon hides flowers shy

This idiom joins two of the Four Beauties. The moon hiding (闭月) belongs to Diaochan, whose beauty was said to make the moon slip behind a cloud; flowers shamed (羞花) belongs to Yang Guifei, before whom the blossoms were said to fold. The other two beauties supply the matching pair 沉鱼落雁, for Xi Shi an...