10 Chinese Idioms With Number Three (三)

Many twists and turns

Literal: One wave three turns

Wang Xizhi, writing on brush method, said that in making a single wave-stroke (一波) the brush turns three times (三折) — the long diagonal that ends a character is not one movement but three changes of direction, and a stroke drawn straight is dead. The phrase left calligraphy for narrative and now des...

Learn many from one example

Literal: Raise one reflect three

Confucius, in the Analects, said he did not go on teaching a man who, shown one corner, could not come back (反) with the other three (三) — 举一隅不以三隅反，则不复也. The image is a square: you are given one corner and expected to supply the rest. It is a statement about what a teacher owes and what a student mu...

Weigh it before you move

Literal: Think three times then act

This one comes from the Analects, on Ji Wenzi, who thought (思) three times (三) before acting (行). The passage is usually quoted as praise, but Confucius's actual response was dry: twice is enough. The idiom therefore recommends something its source gently mocks — deliberation past the point of usefu...

Self-reflect daily

Literal: Examine self three times

Zengzi, not Confucius, says it in the Analects: daily I examine (省) myself (吾身) on three (三) points — whether I have been unfaithful in planning for others, whether I have been untrustworthy with friends, whether I have failed to practise what was passed on to me. Whether 三 counts the occasions or t...

Repeated lie becomes truth

Literal: Three people make tiger real

Pang Cong, about to leave Wei escorting a hostage prince to Handan, asked his king whether he would believe a man who reported a tiger (虎) in the marketplace. No. Two men? He would wonder. Three (三) men (人)? The king said he would believe it. There is no tiger in the marketplace, Pang Cong said, and...

Make concessions to avoid conflict

Literal: Retreat three camps

Chong'er of Jin, sheltering in Chu as an exile, was asked what he would give in return and answered that if the two states ever met in battle he would withdraw three stages (退避三舍). A 舍 was a day's march, thirty li. Years later, as Duke Wen, he was facing Chu at Chengpu and did exactly that — and the...

Profoundly penetrating insight

Literal: Enter wood three tenths

Wang Xizhi wrote out a text for a sacrificial ceremony on a wooden board, and when the carver came to cut it he found the ink had sunk three fen (三分) into the wood (入木). The account is in a Tang treatise on calligraphy, and the measurement — about a centimetre — is the whole point of the story. The ...

Always have backup plans

Literal: Clever rabbit has three burrows

This is from the Strategies of the Warring States, where the retainer Feng Xuan tells Lord Mengchang that a wily (狡) rabbit (兔) keeps three (三) burrows (窟), and merely manages to avoid death — one refuge is not enough for a man in his position either. Feng Xuan then builds him the other two. The adv...

Lasting impact of performance

Literal: Lingering around beams for days

This is from the Liezi, on the singer Han E, who travelled east to Qi and, out of food, paid for a meal with a song at the Yong Gate; after she left, the sound was said to circle (绕) the roof beams (梁) for three (三) days (日) so that the townspeople thought she had not gone. The point is the persiste...

Habitually forgetful and disorganized

Literal: Lose three drop four

To drop (丢) three (三) and mislay (落) four (四) — the last character is read là here, not luò, which trips learners up. The numbers are deliberately non-consecutive, so the losses read as scattered rather than systematic. Vernacular fiction supplies the phrase and it has stayed colloquial. It describe...