10 Chinese Idioms With Thousand (千) & Ten Thousand (万)

Keep promises faithfully

Literal: One promise thousand gold

Ji Bu of the early Han was reliable enough that a saying circulated in Chu: a hundred catties of gold are worth less than one promise (一诺) from Ji Bu — hence a promise worth a thousand (千) in gold (金). The Records of the Grand Historian preserves it. He is not Ji Zha of Wu, whose story about keeping...

Perfected through repeated refinement

Literal: Thousand hammers hundred forges

A thousand (千) hammer blows (锤) and a hundred (百) temperings (炼). The metallurgy is real: folded steel is worked and reheated repeatedly, each cycle driving out impurities, and the count is what distinguishes a blade from a bar of iron. Writing takes it above all, where the sense is rewriting rather...

Ever-changing; constantly varying

Literal: Thousand changes ten thousand transformations

A thousand (千) changes (变) and ten thousand (万) transformations (化). The numbers are conventional rather than counted, and the two verbs are not synonyms: 变 is change in state or appearance, 化 is change into something else entirely, so the pair covers alteration and transmutation together. That is w...

Travel a great distance

Literal: A thousand miles distant

A thousand (千) li (里), with 迢迢 for the distance — a character meaning far which, doubled, means far in a way that is felt. The reduplication is the whole difference: 千里 alone states a measurement, and 千里迢迢 says somebody crossed it. That is why the phrase almost always travels with a person rather th...

Willingly travel far; make great efforts

Literal: Not consider a thousand miles far

Mencius opens with King Hui of Liang receiving him: 叟！不远千里而来，亦将有以利吾国乎 — venerable sir, you did not count a thousand (千) li (里) as far (远), so you must have something to profit my state. Mencius refuses the framing and answers that a king should ask about benevolence rather than profit, which is the ...

A drop in the bucket; negligible amount

Literal: One hair from nine oxen

Writing to Ren An, Sima Qian said that had he submitted to the law and been executed, it would have been the loss of a single (一) hair (毛) from nine (九) oxen (牛), no different from the death of an ant. He is explaining why he accepted castration instead: a clean death would have bought nothing, beca...

Long-term plan; matter of lasting importance

Literal: Hundred-year great plan

A plan (计) reaching a hundred (百) years (年), on the largest (大) scale. 百年 is conventional rather than counted — Chinese uses it for any span longer than a life — so what the phrase claims is a horizon beyond the reach of the people making the decision, which is exactly the argument hardest to win. I...

Everlasting; eternal

Literal: Heaven is long, earth is lasting

This idiom derives from Chapter 7 of the Daoist classic 'Tao Te Ching' (道德经) by Laozi: 'Heaven and earth are long-lasting.' The phrase uses the long-lasting (长) heaven (天) and enduring (久) earth (地) as metaphors for permanence and durability. It gained romantic connotations through Tang Dynasty poet...

Earth-shaking; tremendous

Literal: Startle heaven shake earth

Startling (惊) heaven (天) and shaking (动) earth (地). The pair is the standard Chinese formula for totality — heaven and earth being everything there is — so the phrase claims that nothing was left unaffected by whatever happened. It is deliberately outsized and Chinese knows it, which is why it works...

Perfect accuracy every single time

Literal: Hundred shots hundred hits

This comes from the Strategies of the Warring States, on the archer Yang Youji of Chu, who could hit a willow leaf at a hundred paces so reliably that a hundred shots (百发) gave a hundred hits (百中). In the original a passer-by warns him that skill this great is exactly what will exhaust him, since he...