10 Chinese Idioms About Fame, Legacy & Achievement

Eternal legacy

Literal: Name recorded in history

青史 is green history, and the colour is not decorative: records were written on bamboo, and fresh green bamboo had to be roasted over fire to sweat out its moisture before it would take ink and resist insects. So the phrase means a name (名) hanging down (垂) into the treated bamboo of the record. What...

Enduring good reputation

Literal: Fragrance flows for a hundred generations

Huan Wen, who commanded the armies of Eastern Jin and considered taking the throne, is recorded speaking as he lay, then sitting abruptly up: a man unable to let his fragrance (芳) flow (流) down a hundred (百) generations (世) should at least leave a stench for ten thousand years. The pairing 流芳百世 and ...

Global recognition

Literal: World-renowned

Lifted up (举) before the world (世), heard of (闻) by name (名). It differs from its near-neighbour 举世瞩目 in tense: 瞩目 is the world watching now, while 闻名 is the world already knowing. So this one describes established reputation and that one describes current attention. It suits monuments, dishes and l...

Global attention

Literal: The world watches

The whole world (举世) fixes its gaze (瞩目). The construction is old — early texts speak of being under the eyes of the people of a state — and the modern phrase simply enlarges the audience. It is neutral about the verdict, which is worth knowing: it describes the volume of attention and not its warmt...

Foremost; top-ranked

Literal: Bend the thumb first

Chinese counts by folding fingers down rather than raising them, and the thumb (首指) goes first. So to be the one bent (屈) first is to be counted first — position one in the enumeration. The metaphor is about ranking rather than praise, which gives the phrase its slightly official flavour: it belongs...

Achieve outstanding success

Literal: Stand a head above others

Ouyang Xiu, then the most powerful literary figure in the empire, wrote to a friend about a young examination candidate: I should get out of this man's way and let him stand a head (头) above (出) other men (人) in the world (地). The candidate was Su Shi, and Ouyang Xiu turned out to be right. The phra...

Thrilling, hair-raising

Literal: Startle the heart and soul

Zhong Rong, grading poets in the sixth century, wrote of Lu Ji's fourteen imitations of the old anonymous poems that they startle (惊) the heart (心) and move (动) the soul (魄), and that nearly every character in them is worth a thousand in gold. 魄 is the earthbound half of the soul in Chinese belief, ...

Continuous talent emergence

Literal: Talents emerge in succession

Talented people (人才) emerging (出) generation after generation (辈). 辈 is the operative character: not a crowd at one moment but a succession, cohort following cohort. That makes it a claim about an institution rather than about individuals — a school, a region, a discipline that keeps producing rathe...

Human effort can overcome nature

Literal: Human will conquers nature

The classical sources have something narrower than the modern reading — that people (人) in sufficient numbers can prevail (胜) over heaven (天), meaning that human circumstances are not simply dictated by fate. The received modern sense reads 定 as determination and makes the phrase a general claim tha...

Indecisive hesitation

Literal: Lift chess piece undecided

The Zuo Zhuan reports a warning about a minister wavering over whether to restore an exiled ruler: a man who lifts (举) the chess piece (棋) without having settled (不定) on his move will not beat his opponent, and how much more so when the piece is a lord. The image assumes the reader knows the game — ...