10 Chinese Idioms for Teacher Appreciation

Practice what you know

Literal: Knowledge and action unite as one

Wang Yangming reached his enlightenment in exile at Longchang in Guizhou in 1508, and began teaching this doctrine the following year, when he was invited to head the academy at Guiyang: knowing (知) and acting (行) are one (合一) rather than two stages. His claim is stronger than an exhortation to put ...

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...

Read extensively for knowledge

Literal: Read ten thousand scrolls

This is from the couplet 读万卷书，行万里路 — read (读) ten thousand (万) scrolls (卷书), walk ten thousand li — made famous by the Ming painter and critic Dong Qichang, who used it in his writing on painting; a Yuan-dynasty verse by Fang Hui has it earlier still. It is often misattributed to Du Fu, who wrote so...

So many books they cannot be housed

Literal: Oxen sweat, rafters fill

Books enough that the ox hauling them sweats (汗牛) and the house is filled to the rafters (充栋). Liu Zongyuan coined it in a memorial inscription, complaining about the sheer volume of commentary that had accumulated on a single classic — so the phrase began as a complaint, not a compliment. That edge...

Humbly seek guidance

Literal: Move wine jar seek teaching

Moving (移) one's own wine cup (樽) across to where somebody is sitting, in order to receive (就) instruction (教). The gesture is the entire meaning: the person who wants to learn crosses the room, instead of summoning the teacher or waiting to be approached. Late imperial vernacular writing uses it of...

Experience brings wisdom

Literal: Old horse knows way

Returning from a campaign against Guzhu, the army of Duke Huan of Qi lost the road, and Guan Zhong proposed releasing the old horses (老马) and following them: they had walked the route before and would know the way (识途). They did, and the army got home. The Han Feizi tells it. What makes it a story r...

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...

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...

Show profound respect and patience seeking wisdom

Literal: Cheng door stand snow

The History of Song records that Yang Shi, already an official of forty, went with a friend to put a question to the philosopher Cheng Yi and found him sitting in meditation with his eyes closed. They waited outside rather than disturb him. When Cheng Yi noticed them the snow (雪) at the door (程门) wa...

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...