10 Romantic Chinese Idioms for Couples

Love extends to all connections

Literal: Love house and its crow

Loving (爱) a house (屋) and extending that (及) even to the crows (乌) on its roof. The formulation comes from an early gloss on the Zhou conquest — he who loves a man loves even the crows on his roof — and the crow is chosen because it is the least lovable bird available, which is the entire force of ...

Childhood sweethearts or friends

Literal: Green plums and bamboo horses

Li Bai's Changgan Ballad has a woman remembering her husband when both were small: he came riding a bamboo horse (竹马), and they circled the well playing with green plums (青梅). The two props are ordinary children's things and the poem is about a marriage that grew out of them. The phrase names that s...

Match between families of similar social status

Literal: Door match household align

Both halves are literal architectural features. 门当 are the drum-shaped stones set in pairs at the base of a gateway; 户对 are the short carved pegs projecting above the lintel. Their number and form were regulated by rank, so a family's standing could be read off its doorway from the street. A match i...

Everlasting; eternal

Literal: Heaven is long, earth is lasting

This idiom derives from Chapter 7 of the Daoist classic 'Tao Te Ching' (道德经) by Laozi: 'Heaven and earth are long-lasting.' The phrase uses the long-lasting (长) heaven (天) and enduring (久) earth (地) as metaphors for permanence and durability. It gained romantic connotations through Tang Dynasty poet...

Inseparable; always together

Literal: Body and shadow never separate

Form (形) and shadow (影) not (不) parting (离). The image is of company as unbreakable as the one thing that genuinely cannot leave you — and Chinese poetry had long used the shadow the other way about, as the only companion a solitary person has. That older and bleaker sense sits underneath the modern...

Help each other in adversity

Literal: Moisten each other with spittle

The Zhuangzi: when the spring dries up the fish are left together on land, blowing damp air on one another and wetting each other (相濡) with foam (以沫) — and then the sentence turns, 不如相忘于江湖, better than this would be to forget each other in the rivers and lakes. Zhuangzi is arguing against the situat...

Treat each other with respect

Literal: Respect each other like guests

The Zuo Zhuan records an official passing a field and seeing a man's wife bring him his meal there: the two treated one another 如宾, as guests, and on the strength of that the man was recommended for office. The reasoning is that courtesy sustained where nobody is watching is evidence of character. M...

Married couple with great mutual respect

Literal: Raise tray level with eyebrows

Meng Guang, married to the recluse Liang Hong, served his meals by lifting (举) the tray (案) level (齐) with her eyebrows (眉), not daring to look up at him over the food. The deference recorded is hers, in one direction; what the Book of Later Han finds remarkable is the inference their employer drew ...

Grow old together; lifelong partnership

Literal: White heads together in old age

White (白) heads (头) reaching old age (老) side by side (偕). The Book of Songs supplies the wish — 及尔偕老, to grow old with you — and the white hair was added later to give it a picture. It is a blessing rather than a description: nobody says it about a marriage in progress. It is said at weddings and a...

Instant friendship

Literal: Canopies tilt, like old friends

倾盖 is what happens when two carriages stop alongside on the road and their canopies tilt toward one another — the drivers have paused to talk. Zou Yang, writing from prison, set it against its opposite: 白头如新，倾盖如故, some go grey together and remain strangers, others tilt their canopies once and are ol...