9 Chinese Idioms About Remembering Family & Ancestors

Remember your roots

Literal: Drink water think source

Yu Xin, writing in the sixth century, put it as 落其实者思其树，饮其流者怀其源 — who eats the fruit thinks of the tree, who drinks from the stream remembers its source. The four-character form keeps the second half: drink (饮) the water (水), think (思) of the source (源). It concerns debts owed rather than gratitude ...

Deeply entrenched and difficult to change

Literal: Roots deep stem firm

This comes from the Laozi, on deep roots and a firm base as the way of long life — 深根固柢. A plant whose roots run deep (根深) and whose stem is firmly set (蒂固) is not easily pulled up. Applied to habits and institutions the image is neutral in the original and unflattering now: what is hard to uproot i...

Fundamentally or in the final analysis

Literal: Return root reach bottom

Returning (归) to the root (根) and getting to (到) the bottom (底). Both halves point downward, one botanical and one spatial, and the phrase is used to introduce a conclusion rather than to describe an investigation — it signals that everything said so far is about to be reduced to one thing. Chinese ...

Build up from nothing; self-made

Literal: Empty hands start a household

Starting (起) a household (家) with bare (白) hands (手). 白 is empty here rather than the colour — the same 白 as in 白跑一趟, a trip made for nothing — so what is claimed concerns what was in the hands at the beginning, which is nothing at all. 家 is a household or an estate rather than a company, and that o...

At home anywhere

Literal: Four seas become home

The four seas (四海) taken as one's home (家). It appears in the Records of the Grand Historian, in a builder's justification of an enormous palace: the Son of Heaven takes all within the four seas as his household, so the grandeur is not extravagance but scale. That imperial sense has thinned. It now ...

Know something thoroughly

Literal: Count like family treasures

To recite something as though counting (数) the treasures (珍) of one's own household (家) — the reading is shǔ, to enumerate, not shù. The comparison is exact about what kind of knowledge is meant: not that the person has studied the subject but that they have lived with it, so the details come withou...

Make a gift of something that isn't yours

Literal: Borrow flower offer Buddha

The Buddhist life of the Buddha's former births has the young Sumedha, wanting to make an offering to the buddha Dipankara and owning nothing, buy flowers from a girl who gives them on condition that she share the merit. Borrowing flowers (借花) to offer to the Buddha (献佛) is therefore not condemned i...

Treat each other with respect

Literal: Respect each other like guests

The Zuo Zhuan records an official passing a field and seeing a man's wife bring him his meal there: the two treated one another 如宾, as guests, and on the strength of that the man was recommended for office. The reasoning is that courtesy sustained where nobody is watching is evidence of character. M...

Protect the surface, ruin the foundation

Literal: Love the fur, wear the coat inside out

Duke Wen of Wei met a man carrying hay with his fur coat turned inside out (反裘), and asked why. To protect the fur (爱毛), the man said. The duke pointed out that if the hide backing wore through, the fur would have nothing left to grow on. The phrase names that inversion — guarding the visible, valua...