10 Chinese Idioms for Wishing Good Health in the New Year

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...

Youthful vigor despite old age

Literal: Dragon-horse spirit

The 龙马 is a single creature, not two: the dragon-horse that rose from the Yellow River bearing the diagram on its back, in the legend of how the trigrams were devised. So the phrase claims the vitality (精神) of a mythical beast rather than combining a dragon and a horse. It is used almost exclusively...

Extraordinary healing skill

Literal: Skilled hands bring spring

Marvellous (妙) hands (手) that bring back (回) the spring (春). Chinese medicine describes health as a seasonal balance restored rather than a fault repaired, so spring returning is not decoration — it is the theory. The phrase belongs to doctors above all, and it is what a grateful family writes on th...

Completely safe and unharmed through danger

Literal: Peaceful without illness

The Strategies of the Warring States has the Queen Dowager of Zhao receive an envoy from Qi and, before she has broken the seal on his letter, ask him three questions: is the harvest without trouble (无恙), are the people without trouble, is your king without trouble. The envoy takes offence at the or...

Live peacefully and work happily

Literal: Peaceful dwelling happy occupation

Settled in one's dwelling (安居) and content in one's work (乐业). The pairing covers the two halves of an ordinary life, house and livelihood, and Chinese political language has used it for two thousand years as the plain statement of what government is for. That is what gives it its weight: it is a mo...

Look happy and content

Literal: Spring wind fills the face

A face (面) filled (满) with spring breeze (春风) — the look of someone whose good humour is visible before they speak. The comparison is to weather rather than to expression: the warmth is taken to be radiating outward rather than performed. It is also written 满面春风, with the halves reversed and the sen...

In perfect element

Literal: Fish finds water

In the Records of the Three Kingdoms, Liu Bei answers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, who were unhappy at how close he had grown to the newly recruited Zhuge Liang: 孤之有孔明，犹鱼之有水也 — my having Kongming is like a fish (鱼) having (得) water (水) — and asks them to say no more about it. The history puts the three of...

Everything in right place

Literal: Each finds its place

Each (各) obtaining (得) its (其) proper place (所). The Book of Changes uses it of a market where everyone has exchanged what they came to exchange and gone home satisfied. That is the sense: not equality but fit, with the test being that nothing is left misplaced. Appointments, seating plans, settleme...

Gentle, nurturing influence

Literal: Spring wind and nurturing rain

This is from the Mencius, which counts among a teacher's modes the one who transforms a student as a timely rain does — the spring wind (春风) and the rain that transforms (化雨). Nothing is forced; the growth is the student's own, and the teacher supplies the conditions. It is reserved for education ra...

Feel at ease with a clear conscience

Literal: Heart at peace, reason satisfied

The heart (心) at rest (安) because the reasoning (理) holds up (得). The two halves stand in a stated relation: the calm is not a temperament but a consequence, and it is available only to somebody who has actually checked. That is what makes the phrase useful, and also what makes it available for sarc...