9 Chinese Idioms for Your Resume & Professional Profile

Integrate many strands into one understanding

Literal: Merge and flow through completely

Zhu Xi gave the phrase its lasting sense in the collected works, describing the point a student reaches after long effort and thorough investigation, when the separate things learned melt together (融会) and run right through (贯通) one another — raise one corner and get three back, hear one thing and k...

Student surpasses master

Literal: Blue comes from indigo plant

Xunzi opens his chapter on learning with it: 青，取之于蓝，而青于蓝 — blue (青) is taken from (出于) the indigo plant (蓝), and is bluer than the plant. The point is the student's, not the teacher's: nothing is being criticised, and the dye is better precisely because the plant existed. Common speech runs it as 青出...

Stand out from crowd

Literal: Crane stands among chickens

This one comes from the Shishuo Xinyu, on Ji Shao, of whom an onlooker said that seeing him in a crowd was like seeing a crane (鹤) standing (立) among chickens (鸡群). The remark was reported to his father's friend, who replied that the onlooker had never seen the father. The distinction it names is be...

Achieve instinctive mastery

Literal: Eyes see no whole ox

After three years of practice, Cook Ding in the Zhuangzi no longer saw the whole (全) ox (牛): his eyes (目) stopped registering the animal as a single object and took in the joints and cavities instead, so that the knife went through gaps rather than through tissue. 无 is that absence of the whole. The...

Craftsmanship beyond natural limits

Literal: Skill surpasses nature's work

This descends from a line by Zhao Mengfu of the Yuan dynasty on human artifice seizing the work of heaven — 人间巧艺夺天工. Skill (巧) so fine that it wrests away (夺) what nature (天) made (工) is praise of an unusual kind, since it sets craft in competition with creation rather than in imitation of it. Workm...

Create effortlessly from mastery

Literal: Casually pluck it up

Reaching out casually (信手) and plucking up (拈来) exactly the right thing, without hunting for it. The phrase itself is Chan Buddhist — a monk's verse in the Jingde Records has 信手拈来草, taking up whatever grass comes to hand — and Song and Jin critics borrowed it for Su Shi, whose allusions seemed never...

Excellence develops with time

Literal: A great vessel is completed late

This is from the Laozi: 大方无隅，大器晚成 — the greatest square has no corners, the greatest vessel (大器) is completed (成) late (晚). The line sits in a series about great things escaping ordinary measure, so lateness here is a property of scale rather than a delay. A later anecdote applies it to a man dismis...

Excellence that outshines all others

Literal: Out of the kind, above the gathered

This one comes from the Mencius, where Confucius is described as having come out from his kind and risen above the gathered crowd — 出于其类，拔乎其萃. To emerge (出) from one's category (类) and stand above (拔) the assembly (萃) is not to be better at the same thing but to be no longer comparable. Somebody who...

At peak of youth's ability

Literal: Bearing and talent in full bloom

The point at which somebody's bearing and talent (风华) are in fullest flower (正茂). Unlike most entries here it is modern rather than classical, and owes its currency to twentieth-century writing about youth. It is used of a period of life rather than a single achievement, and carries a sense of power...