8 Healing Chinese Idioms for Get Well Soon Wishes

Leniency encourages worse behavior

Literal: Indulgence nurtures evildoers

姑息 is indulgence of the temporary, accommodating kind — the Book of Rites contrasts loving someone with virtue against loving them with 姑息 — and the phrase adds what it produces: nurturing (养) what is corrupt (奸). The verb is the sharp part, since 养 is what you do deliberately to something you want ...

Choose simpler pleasures over status displays

Literal: Peaceful walking substitutes carriage

This is from the Strategies of the Warring States, where the scholar Yan Chu declines the patronage of King Xuan of Qi. Offered position and a carriage, he answers that he would rather eat late so that plain food tastes like meat, and walk unhurried (安步) so that walking serves as (当) a carriage (车)....

Live peacefully and work happily

Literal: Peaceful dwelling happy occupation

Settled in one's dwelling (安居) and content in one's work (乐业). The pairing covers the two halves of an ordinary life, house and livelihood, and Chinese political language has used it for two thousand years as the plain statement of what government is for. That is what gives it its weight: it is a mo...

Completely safe and unharmed through danger

Literal: Peaceful without illness

The Strategies of the Warring States has the Queen Dowager of Zhao receive an envoy from Qi and, before she has broken the seal on his letter, ask him three questions: is the harvest without trouble (无恙), are the people without trouble, is your king without trouble. The envoy takes offence at the or...

Absolutely stable and unshakable

Literal: Stable like Mount Tai

Steady (安) as (如) Mount Tai (泰山). Tai is the easternmost of the five sacred peaks and the one emperors climbed to report to heaven, so invoking it is not merely a comparison to something heavy — it is the mountain the whole culture uses as its reference for permanence. Chinese pairs it with the oppo...

Extremely restless and anxious

Literal: Cannot sit or stand peacefully

Unable to settle (不安) either sitting (坐) or standing (立). The phrase reports posture rather than feeling, and that is where its force comes from: the anxiety is something an observer infers from a body that keeps changing its mind. It is therefore more specific than worry, and it fits one kind of wa...

Be prepared for danger in times of safety

Literal: Dwelling in peace think of danger

The Zuo Zhuan records Wei Jiang declining half the musicians and gifts Zheng had sent, and offering advice instead, in words the Book of Documents had already supplied: 居安思危，思则有备，有备无患 — in safety think of danger, thinking brings preparation, and with preparation there is no calamity. The three claus...

Sympathize with those sharing similar troubles

Literal: Same illness mutually sympathize

The Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue gives it to Wu Zixu, explaining why he had taken in another exile from Chu whose family had also been destroyed: those with the same affliction (同病) pity one another (相怜), those with the same anxiety help one another. The sequel is worth knowing — the man h...