7 Soaring Chinese Idioms With Bird (鸟)

Work harder to compensate

Literal: The clumsy bird flies first

The clumsy (笨) bird (鸟) sets off first (先飞). The phrase belongs to vernacular drama and is most often said by the person about themselves, which is where its charm is: it concedes the disadvantage and then treats it as a scheduling problem rather than a verdict. That makes it a genuinely useful thin...

Two goals with one action

Literal: One stone two birds

A calque rather than a classical idiom: one (一) stone (石), two (二) birds (鸟), taken into Chinese from the English 'kill two birds with one stone' by way of the Japanese 一石二鳥, during the decades of heavy borrowing around the turn of the twentieth century. It is worth knowing precisely because it feel...

Overly fearful and suspicious

Literal: Wind sound crane call

After the rout at the Fei River, Fu Jian's enormous army broke and ran, and the History of the Jin says that the sound (声) of the wind (风) and the cry (唳) of a crane (鹤) were enough to convince the fleeing men that the Jin army was on them. They slept in the open and starved on the road, and most of...

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...

Extremely rare

Literal: Phoenix feather unicorn horn

A phoenix's (凤) feather (毛) and a qilin's (麟) horn (角). Neither animal is ordinarily to be met with at all, so the phrase names not scarcity but the parts of something that does not exist — a stronger claim than any comparison with rare real things. Both creatures were held to appear only under a sa...

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...

Completely silent; so quiet you could hear a pin drop

Literal: Crows and sparrows without sound

Neither crow (鸦) nor sparrow (雀) making a sound (无声). The two birds are chosen for being the commonest and least ceremonious noise in a Chinese street — always there, never quiet — so their silence measures the hush better than any statement about people could. What is being reported is a place that...