12 Most Searched Chinese Idioms - Popular Chengyu Everyone Wants to Know

Push far enough and it turns

Literal: Things at extreme reverse

When a thing (物) reaches its extreme (极) it must (必) turn back (反). The formula is put most plainly in the Lüshi Chunqiu, which argues that the ruler should not occupy the complete, the extreme or the full, because what is complete will be broken, what is extreme will reverse, and what is full will ...

Hope appears in darkness

Literal: Dark willows bright flowers

This comes from Lu You's Visiting a Village West of the Mountains, of the Southern Song: 山重水复疑无路，柳暗花明又一村 — where the hills fold and the streams double back and there seems to be no road, the willows darken (柳暗) and the flowers brighten (花明), and there is another village. The turn arrives at the mome...

Vast crowds of people

Literal: People mountain people sea

People (人) as mountains (山), people (人) as sea (海). The construction repeats 人 rather than joining the two landforms, which is what gives it its rhythm and makes it one of the first idioms most learners can produce. It describes density rather than number: the point is that individuals have stopped ...

Persistence achieves anything

Literal: Water drops pierce stone

The Song collection Helin Yulu attaches this to the magistrate Zhang Guaiya, who had a clerk flogged for a single copper coin, was told he would not dare behead him for it, and wrote the judgment before doing exactly that: a coin a day is a thousand coins in a thousand days, and 绳锯木断，水滴石穿 — a rope u...

Help in time of need

Literal: Send coal in snow

To send (送) charcoal (炭) into (中) the snow (雪). What the image fixes is timing rather than generosity: charcoal is cheap, and in a snowstorm it is the only thing worth having, so the value of the gift is entirely in when it arrives. Chinese sets it directly against 锦上添花, adding flowers to brocade, a...

Remember your roots

Literal: Drink water think source

Yu Xin, writing in the sixth century, put it as 落其实者思其树，饮其流者怀其源 — who eats the fruit thinks of the tree, who drinks from the stream remembers its source. The four-character form keeps the second half: drink (饮) the water (水), think (思) of the source (源). It concerns debts owed rather than gratitude ...

Borrow authority to intimidate

Literal: Fox uses tiger's power

A tiger caught a fox, and the fox said heaven had made it lord of the beasts, so eating it would be defying heaven — walk behind me and see whether anything dares stand its ground. The tiger followed, the animals fled, and the tiger concluded the fox had been telling the truth. The Strategies of the...

Narrow-minded from limited experience

Literal: Frog at well bottom

In the Zhuangzi, a frog (蛙) at the bottom (底) of a broken well (井) boasts to a turtle of the Eastern Sea about the water reaching its armpits, the mud covering its feet, and how nothing else in the well can match it. The turtle tries to get in: its left foot is not yet inside before its right knee i...

Adopt the customs of where you are

Literal: Enter village follow customs

Enter (入) the district (乡), follow (随) its customs (俗). The older formulation, about entering a place and going by its rules, is in the Zhuangzi, and the four-character version is fixed in Chan collections. It is worth noticing what it does not say: nothing about approving of the customs, only about...

Present to wrong audience

Literal: Play zither to cow

Gongming Yi played a refined melody to an ox, which went on grazing. He then played something imitating a gadfly and a lost calf, and the ox raised its tail and pricked its ears — the fault, the account observes, was not in the ox's hearing but in the mismatch. The story survives in a Han Buddhist a...

Wait passively for luck

Literal: Guard the stump, wait for a rabbit

This Warring States period parable tells of a farmer who, after seeing a rabbit die by running into a tree stump (株), waited (待) endlessly for more rabbits (兔) at the same spot. His guard (守) of the stump became a classic example of misguided persistence and inflexible thinking. The story appeared i...

Exceptionally beautiful

Literal: Moon hides flowers shy

This idiom joins two of the Four Beauties. The moon hiding (闭月) belongs to Diaochan, whose beauty was said to make the moon slip behind a cloud; flowers shamed (羞花) belongs to Yang Guifei, before whom the blossoms were said to fold. The other two beauties supply the matching pair 沉鱼落雁, for Xi Shi an...