10 Chinese Idioms From Journey to the West (西游记)

Return to righteousness

Literal: Turn from wrong return to right

Turning away (改) from what is wrong (邪) and returning (归) to what is right (正). The force sits in 归: rightness is treated as the place a person came from and can go back to, not somewhere new they have to be argued into. Vernacular fiction and drama supply the phrase, and there it marks a moment rat...

Add crucial finishing touch

Literal: Dot dragon's eyes

Zhang Sengyou painted four dragons on a temple wall in Jinling and left them without pupils, saying that if he dotted the eyes they would fly away. Pressed, he dotted two. Thunder split the wall and those two went up into the cloud; the two he had left blind were still there. The account is in Zhang...

Borrow authority to intimidate

Literal: Fox uses tiger's power

A tiger caught a fox, and the fox said heaven had made it lord of the beasts, so eating it would be defying heaven — walk behind me and see whether anything dares stand its ground. The tiger followed, the animals fled, and the tiger concluded the fox had been telling the truth. The Strategies of the...

Volunteer oneself confidently

Literal: Mao Sui recommends himself

Zhao needed an alliance with Chu and the Lord of Pingyuan could find only nineteen suitable men among his retainers. Mao Sui (毛遂) put himself (自) forward (荐). Asked how long he had been in the household and told three years, the lord said that a man of ability is like an awl in a bag — the point sho...

Wait passively for luck

Literal: Guard the stump, wait for a rabbit

This Warring States period parable tells of a farmer who, after seeing a rabbit die by running into a tree stump (株), waited (待) endlessly for more rabbits (兔) at the same spot. His guard (守) of the stump became a classic example of misguided persistence and inflexible thinking. The story appeared i...

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...

Needlessly suspicious

Literal: Bow in cup snake shadow

Ying Shao's Comprehensive Meaning of Customs tells of a guest who saw a snake (蛇) in the wine he had been handed, drank it out of politeness, and went home ill for months. His host, working out where the man had been sitting, found a painted bow (弓) on the wall and its reflection (影) lying in the cu...

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...

Professed love hiding actual fear

Literal: Lord Ye loves dragons

Lord Ye (叶公) loved (好) dragons (龙): they were on his belt-hooks, on his chisels, carved through the rooms of his house. The real dragon heard of it and came, put its head in at the window and its tail into the hall, and Lord Ye ran with his wits gone. Liu Xiang tells it against a ruler who said he w...

Commanding imposing strategic position

Literal: Tiger crouch dragon coil

Zhuge Liang is said to have described the terrain at present-day Nanjing as a coiling dragon (龙盘) and a crouching tiger (虎踞) — the ridge line curling round and the rock outcrop hunched above the river. Both animals are shown gathered rather than in motion, which is the sense being conveyed: not aggr...