8 Chinese Idioms With Foot (足)

Shirk effort by preference

Literal: Love ease hate work

To love (好) ease (逸) and hate (恶) toil (劳). The two verbs are the point: this is not laziness as a failing of will but as a preference, something the phrase presents as the ordinary human default rather than a vice peculiar to the person being described. That makes it a diagnosis more than an insult...

Commit with no retreat

Literal: Break pots sink boats

In 207 BCE Xiang Yu took his army across the river to relieve Julu, and then had the boats (舟) sunk (沉) and the cooking pots (釜) smashed (破), keeping three days' rations and nothing else. The Records of the Grand Historian is explicit that this was done to show the troops they would die rather than ...

Progress needs constant effort

Literal: Boat moving against current

A boat (舟) worked (行) against (逆) the current (水). The phrase is nearly always completed by its second half — 不进则退, if you do not advance you fall back — and that clause is the whole argument. What makes the image exact is that holding position is not a rest state: the river is doing work on the hul...

Less effort, better results

Literal: Half effort double result

This one comes from the Mencius, which argues that acting at the right moment takes half (半) the effort (事) of the ancients and produces double (倍) the result (功). Mencius's point is about timing, not technique: the same work done when conditions are ready yields disproportionately more. An approach...

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...

Adversity is what finishes you

Literal: Works you like jade into completion

This comes from Zhang Zai's Western Inscription of the Song dynasty: 贫贱忧戚，庸玉女于成 — poverty, low station, worry and grief are the means by which you (汝) are worked like jade (玉) into completion (成). Jade is not found finished; it is cut and ground, and the phrase treats hardship as that grinding rathe...

Experience brings wisdom

Literal: Old horse knows way

Returning from a campaign against Guzhu, the army of Duke Huan of Qi lost the road, and Guan Zhong proposed releasing the old horses (老马) and following them: they had walked the route before and would know the way (识途). They did, and the army got home. The Han Feizi tells it. What makes it a story r...

Powerful unstoppable momentum

Literal: Ten thousand horses galloping

Ten thousand (万) horses (马) at full gallop (奔腾). Chinese uses 万 as an intensifier rather than a count, and what the image supplies beyond mere numbers is the ground noise — a mass of animals moving as one thing, felt before it is seen. Poets applied it to rivers in flood and to surf. Modern usage is...