10 Lucky Chinese Idioms to Write on Red Envelopes (红包祝福语)

Achieve immediate success

Literal: Success upon the horse's arrival

The horse (马) arrives (到) and the thing succeeds (成功). It belongs to Yuan drama, where a general's mount reaching the field is the moment the outcome is settled, and the compression is the point: no campaign, no struggle, just arrival and result. Chinese uses it almost entirely as a wish rather than...

Smooth sailing; everything going well

Literal: One sail with favorable wind

One (一) sail (帆), the wind (风) following (顺). 顺风 is wind from astern, the condition under which a junk simply goes, and the phrase is a sailor's before it is anyone else's. It survives almost entirely as a wish rather than a description: written on cards, said at departures, and used of a career or ...

Advance steadily; continuous promotion

Literal: Step by step rising high

Step (步) by step (步) rising (升) higher (高). The doubling of 步 is the whole distinction: every other phrase in this family describes a rise that skipped something, and this one insists the stages were all taken. That makes it the safe thing to say, which is why it is a blessing rather than a descript...

Gain both fame and fortune

Literal: Fame and profit both obtained

Reputation (名) and profit (利), both (双) collected (收). The two are treated in Chinese as the standard pair of worldly rewards and as ordinarily in tension — the scholar who has one is assumed to have given up the other — so the claim in 双 is that somebody got round the trade-off. That is why the phr...

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...

Thriving; flourishing

Literal: Flourishing toward prosperity

Tao Yuanming, going home for good, wrote 木欣欣以向荣，泉涓涓而始流 — the trees thriving (欣欣) as they turn toward (向) flourishing (荣), the springs beginning to trickle. 欣 is gladness, so the doubling gives the growth an air of pleasure rather than mere vigour, and the phrase has kept it. Economies, businesses an...

Win at the very start; immediate success

Literal: Flag opens, obtain victory

The banners (旗) unfurled (开) and the victory (胜) taken (得). The picture is of an army winning its first engagement of a campaign, on the day the flags come out, so the phrase concerns the beginning rather than the whole. That is what makes it a blessing instead of a report: it is said before somethi...

Achieve success and fame

Literal: Merit achieved, name established

The work (功) completed (成) and the name (名) established (就). Both halves are achievements and the order is causal: the reputation follows the accomplishment rather than accompanying it. That is what makes the phrase retrospective. It describes a career that is finished rather than one going well, wh...

Effort is eventually repaid

Literal: Heaven's way rewards diligence

Heaven's way (天道) repays (酬) diligence (勤). 酬 is the word for requiting a debt or returning a toast, so the claim is transactional: the effort is owed something, and the universe is the party that settles. That is a stronger position than simply hoping hard work pays off, and it is close to the argu...

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...