10 Best Chinese New Year Greetings for 2026 (With Pinyin & Meaning)

Sudden, remarkable success

Literal: One cry startles everyone

King Zhuang of Chu spent three years on the throne issuing no orders at all. An officer put him a riddle about a bird that for three years had neither stirred its wings nor called, and the king answered that though it had not flown, when it flew it would reach the heavens, and though it had not crie...

Extremely popular

Literal: Doorway busy as market

Zou Ji persuaded King Wei of Qi that everyone around him had a reason to flatter him, and the king proclaimed rewards for anyone who would name his faults. At first the gate and courtyard (门庭) were as crowded as a market (若市). After some months people still came, but only now and then; after a full ...

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 ...

Value time preciously

Literal: Value time like gold

To guard (守) time (时) as though it were gold (如金). This is a modern four-character phrase, not a classical idiom: it has no source text, and it is formed on the pattern of the much older 一寸光阴一寸金 ("an inch of time is an inch of gold") and 惜时如金. What it adds to that older sentiment is 守 — the sense is...

Student surpasses master

Literal: Blue comes from indigo plant

Xunzi opens his chapter on learning with it: 青，取之于蓝，而青于蓝 — blue (青) is taken from (出于) the indigo plant (蓝), and is bluer than the plant. The point is the student's, not the teacher's: nothing is being criticised, and the dye is better precisely because the plant existed. Common speech runs it as 青出...

Add crucial finishing touch

Literal: Dot dragon's eyes

Zhang Sengyou painted four dragons on a temple wall in Jinling and left them without pupils, saying that if he dotted the eyes they would fly away. Pressed, he dotted two. Thunder split the wall and those two went up into the cloud; the two he had left blind were still there. The account is in Zhang...

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...

Offer modest view to inspire better

Literal: Throw brick attract jade

Zhao Gu was the better poet, and Chang Jian wanted a poem out of him. Knowing Zhao Gu would visit the Lingyan Temple, Chang Jian went first and wrote two lines on the wall; Zhao Gu came, saw them, and completed the quatrain. Chang Jian's couplet was much the weaker, which is the point of the anecdot...

Unity creates strength

Literal: Many wills make wall

This architectural metaphor shows how many wills (众志) can form (成) an impenetrable wall (城), drawing from ancient Chinese defensive architecture. It gained significance during the Warring States period when city walls required massive coordinated effort to construct and defend. Historical records de...

Keep integrity without compromise

Literal: Keep right no flattery

To keep to (守) what is upright (正) and not (不) bend (阿). 阿 is the load-bearing character: it means to lean toward, to curry favour, to give someone the benefit they have not earned, and the whole phrase turns on refusing that particular motion rather than on virtue in the abstract. It belongs to the...