10 Chinese Idioms for Housewarming & New Home

Misfortune might be a blessing

Literal: Old man loses horse

The Huainanzi tells of a man living out by the frontier, known ever since as the Old Man of the Frontier — 塞翁, from 塞, a border pass, and 翁, an old man. His horse (马) was lost (失), simply ran off. His neighbours came to console him and he asked how they knew it was not good fortune; the horse return...

Value harmony above all

Literal: Value harmony as precious

This descends from the Analects, where Master You says that in the working of ritual, harmony (和) is what is precious (贵) — 礼之用，和为贵. The claim is more careful than it looks: harmony is the point of the forms, but he adds at once that harmony pursued without the forms will not stand. Modern usage adv...

Fortune finally turns your way

Literal: Time comes and fortune turns

The hour arrives (时来) and the luck turns (运转). Both halves assume a wheel: fortune in this vocabulary is not distributed but cyclical, so a bad stretch is a position on the turn rather than a settled condition. That is the consolation being offered. It belongs to ordinary speech and to fortune-telli...

Perfect peaceful place

Literal: Peach spring beyond world

Tao Yuanming's account of the peach (桃) blossom spring (源) has a fisherman follow a stream through a grove, squeeze through a gap in the rock and come out among people who fled the wars of Qin: 乃不知有汉，无论魏晋 — they do not know there was a Han, still less Wei and Jin. He is entertained, leaves, marks th...

Balance excellence with social harmony

Literal: Respect work enjoy community

The Record of Learning in the Book of Rites lays out what a student should be examined on at each stage: after three years, whether he takes his studies seriously (敬业) and gets on with his fellows (乐群). The pairing is the point — competence and sociability are assessed together, and neither substitu...

Vibrant youthful energy and enthusiasm

Literal: Morning vigor flourishing

朝气 is the vigour of the early morning, set in Chinese against 暮气, the flatness of evening, and the pair is used of people rather than of times of day. 蓬勃 is the vocabulary of plants growing thickly. So the phrase claims the energy of a morning and the growth of a spring together, and it is applied t...

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...

Find genuine pleasure in helping others

Literal: Happy to help people

To take pleasure (乐于) in helping people (助人). The phrase is modern and has no classical source, though the idea it names is old: the fuller form 助人为乐 makes the claim explicit, that the helping is itself the reward rather than a means to one. The grammatical point is 乐于, "to find joy in" — it marks t...