10 HSK 5 Chinese Idioms for Reading Comprehension

Anxious and unsettled

Literal: Seven up eight down

Seven (七) up (上), eight (八) down (下). The Water Margin gives the source as a two-part folk saying — fifteen buckets drawing water from a well, seven going up and eight coming down — which is where the odd numbers come from and why they do not match. The image is of something that will not settle. It...

Youthful despite old age

Literal: Crane hair, child face

Hair (发) white as a crane's (鹤) with the face (颜) of a child (童). Both halves are drawn from Daoist longevity literature, where the crane is a standard emblem of long life and the retained childlike complexion is what successful cultivation was supposed to produce. The phrase does not simply mean ol...

Endure hardship for future success

Literal: Sleep on firewood, taste gall

Goujian of Yue, beaten and made to serve Fuchai of Wu, was let home and set about not forgetting it. The Records of the Grand Historian describes what he did: he hung a gall bladder (胆) where he sat, and looked up at it whenever he sat or lay down, and tasted (尝) it before every meal. The brushwood ...

Actions cannot be undone

Literal: Spilled water hard to recover

This descends from the story of Jiang Ziya, whose wife left him during his years of poverty and sought to return once he had risen. He poured a basin of water on the ground and invited her to gather it up. Water once overturned (覆水) cannot be recovered (难收). The story is unsentimental about the asym...

Harmful interference ruins growth

Literal: Pull seedlings to help growth

This one comes from the Mencius. A man of Song, impatient that his seedlings (苗) were not growing (长), went through the field pulling (揠) each one upward to help (助) it along, and came home exhausted to announce what he had done; his son ran out to find every plant dead. Mencius tells it against tho...

Self-deception through ignoring reality

Literal: Cover ears while stealing bell

A man found a bell too large to carry and tried to break it up; the noise alarmed him, so he covered (掩) his own ears (耳) and went on hammering at the thing he was stealing (盗). The Lüshi Chunqiu tells it as a lesson to rulers about refusing to hear what is being said of them. The original is a bell...

Narrow-minded from limited experience

Literal: Frog at well bottom

In the Zhuangzi, a frog (蛙) at the bottom (底) of a broken well (井) boasts to a turtle of the Eastern Sea about the water reaching its armpits, the mud covering its feet, and how nothing else in the well can match it. The turtle tries to get in: its left foot is not yet inside before its right knee i...

Two brothers of equal merit; now often said ironically

Literal: Difficult elder and younger brothers

This is from the Shishuo Xinyu, on the two sons of Chen Shi, of whom it was said that each was hard (难) to be the elder brother (兄) of and hard to be the younger brother (弟) of — neither could be ranked above the other. Read that way it is high praise. The character 难 was later taken in its other se...

Hiding problems worsens them

Literal: Conceal illness, avoid doctors

The story is in the Han Feizi. The physician Bian Que told Duke Huan of Cai three times that illness (疾) was spreading in him, and each time the duke denied it and dismissed him; on the fourth visit Bian Que turned and left, because the sickness had reached the marrow. The duke died. The four charac...

Extreme caution in risky situations

Literal: Like walking on thin ice

This descends from the Book of Songs: 战战兢兢，如临深渊，如履薄冰 — trembling and cautious, as if standing at the edge of a deep gorge, as if treading (履) on thin (薄) ice (冰). Note it is the Book of Songs, not the Book of Changes. The image assumes the ice is already bearing your weight; the danger is not ahead ...