10 Chinese Idioms for Everyday Conversation

Make a long story short

Literal: Long story briefly tell

Long talk (长话) told short (短说). This belongs to the vernacular storytelling register rather than to classical literature — it is the phrase a speaker uses on themselves, to signal that they are cutting a long account down before they start, and it has no source text. Chinese uses it exactly as Engli...

Unreliable information from casual hearsay

Literal: Road hear path say

This one comes from the Analects, where Confucius says that to hear something on the road (道听) and repeat it on the path (途说) is to throw virtue away. The objection is not that the report is false but that the speaker has taken no trouble to find out — repeating is treated as a moral failure, not me...

Speak or act in deliberately indirect manner

Literal: Turn corners, skirt angles

Turning corners (拐弯) and skirting angles (抹角) — the phrase describes a route through a crowded old quarter, where nothing runs straight and progress is made by a series of small deflections. Applied to speech it means arriving at the point eventually and never directly. The tone is mildly impatient,...

Living up to one's name or reputation

Literal: Name matches reality

The name (名) matching (副) the reality (实). Cao Cao uses the equivalent phrase in a letter praising Wang Xiu, saying his repute and his substance corresponded and that he far surpassed ordinary men. Behind it lies the older Confucian preoccupation with 正名, the rectification of names, on the argument ...

Essentially the same with minor differences

Literal: Largely same, slightly different

The Zhuangzi preserves Hui Shi's distinction: things broadly alike and slightly unlike he called the small sameness-and-difference, and the fact that all things are both wholly alike and wholly unlike he called the great one. The idiom keeps the first half — largely (大) the same (同), slightly (小) di...

Easy; effortless

Literal: Light and easy to lift

Light (轻) and therefore easy (易) to lift (举). The image is of picking something up and finding it weighs nothing, which is a particular kind of ease: the difficulty was expected and failed to materialise. That is why the phrase is as much about the lifter as the load, and why it can be quietly defla...

Stopped at exactly the right point

Literal: Just arriving at the good place

Arriving (到) exactly (恰) at the right (好) spot (处). 处 is a place, and the spatial metaphor does real work: the claim is not that something was done well but that there was a point, that going past it would have been as wrong as stopping short, and that this was it. Seasoning, timing, the length of a...

Betray nothing of what happened

Literal: As if nothing happened

Behaving as if (若) there were no (无) such (其) matter (事). The phrase reports a performance and declines to say what is behind it, which is exactly its usefulness: the same four characters cover admirable composure, deliberate concealment and genuine indifference, and the listener has to supply which...

So common as to attract no attention

Literal: Minister of Works sees it habitually

Liu Yuxi, back in the capital after his provincial posting, was entertained at the house of Li Shen, himself lately relieved of a regional command; singing girls performed, and Liu wrote a poem on the spot: sights like this are ordinary to a Minister of Works (司空), and they break the heart of a mere...

Follow established procedures; step by step

Literal: Follow the categories, fall into the order

Lu Ji, writing on composition, describes the writer choosing meanings according to (按) their section (部) and settling words into (就) their proper rank (班) — the vocabulary is that of officials arranged by grade. The phrase therefore began as an account of good order in writing and moved outward to p...