12 Chinese Idioms for HSK 7-9 Advanced Mastery

Have great vision

Literal: Hills and valleys in heart

Hills (丘) and ravines (壑) already inside the chest (胸有). The phrase belongs to landscape painting, where the whole terrain was expected to exist in the painter's mind before the brush touched the silk — the same claim 胸有成竹 makes about a stalk of bamboo, and the two are near neighbours. What distingu...

Gradual accumulation builds up

Literal: Days pile months gather

Piled up (积) by the day (日), accumulated (累) by the month (月). Its usefulness is that it names the timescale rather than the effort — what it describes is not diligence but duration. Chinese uses it in both directions, which is worth noticing. Skill and savings accumulate this way, and so do bad hab...

Perceive tiny details

Literal: See autumn down clear

This descends from the Mencius, where a man claims sight clear (明) enough to make out (察) the tip of an autumn (秋) hair (毫) — the fine down animals grow as the year turns, proverbially the smallest visible thing — yet cannot see a cartload of firewood. Mencius uses it to expose selective attention r...

Stay humble and open

Literal: Empty heart like valley

The Daodejing describes the man of old as being, among other things, open as a valley. A chest (怀) held empty (虚) like (若) a valley (谷) takes in whatever comes down into it, and the emptiness is a capacity rather than a lack. Chinese moral vocabulary is consistent about this: the chest is where tole...

Cannot undo what's done

Literal: Four horses can't catch

A team of four horses (驷) was the fastest thing on a Chinese road, and the saying holds that even it cannot catch (难追) a word once it has been spoken. The Analects puts the same thought more tersely — 驷不及舌, four horses do not overtake the tongue — in a rebuke about speaking carelessly of other peopl...

Always someone better

Literal: Skies beyond skies

Beyond (外) the sky (天) there is another sky (天). It travels as half of a pair — 天外有天，人外有人, and beyond any person there is another person — and the second clause is what the first is for. The construction is deliberately recursive: no matter which sky you have reached, the sentence can be applied aga...

Give out until nothing is left

Literal: Spring silkworm until death

This image comes from Li Shangyin's Untitled poem of the Tang dynasty: 春蚕到死丝方尽，蜡炬成灰泪始干 — the spring (春) silkworm (蚕) spins until death (死) before its thread is done, and the candle's tears dry only when it has burned to ash. The couplet is a love poem, and the silkworm is a figure for longing that d...

Live as a recluse in the wild

Literal: Pillow stone rinse stream

To pillow (枕) on stone (石) and rinse (漱) in the stream (流) is the standard image of the recluse who has declined office and lives off the mountain. Its fame, however, comes from a slip: the New Account of Tales of the World records Sun Chu, meaning to say it, getting it out as 漱石枕流 — rinsing with st...

Small signs show big picture

Literal: One leaf know autumn

This one comes from the Huainanzi of the Han dynasty: 见一叶落而知岁之将暮 — seeing one leaf fall, one knows the year is drawing to its close. From a single (一) leaf (叶) one knows (知) that autumn (秋) has come. The point is inference from a small, ordinary, easily missed particular, not from a dramatic sign. R...

Study extremely hard

Literal: Hang beam stab thigh

Two men, two methods. Sun Jing, of the Han, tied his hair to the roof beam (悬梁) so that nodding off would pull him upright. Su Qin, generations earlier, had been sent home from Qin in disgrace after ten memorials went unread, and read through the night with an awl beside him, stabbing (刺) his own th...

Persist despite impossibility

Literal: Bird fills sea with pebbles

This poignant idiom comes from the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Nüwa (女娃), the young daughter of Yandi the Flame Emperor, drowned in the Eastern Sea, and her spirit became a bird called Jingwei (精卫) that carried twigs and pebbles from the western mountains to drop into the water, determined to fil...

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...