10 Chinese Idioms About Deep Friendship & Loyalty

Tacit understanding; unspoken agreement

Literal: Hearts illuminate without declaring

Hearts (心) lit (照) for one another, with nothing (不) announced (宣). 照 is illumination that reveals rather than a signal that is sent, so the understanding is treated as a condition already in place and not as a message that got through. That is what separates it from tact or from hinting. Two people...

Reluctant to part; lingering attachment

Literal: Clinging and unwilling to part

依 is to lean on or cling to, and 依依 has two settled senses: the soft swaying of branches, as in the Book of Songs' willows at a parting, and the one at work here, the look of somebody reluctant to go. With 不舍, unwilling (不) to let go (舍), the phrase stretches the moment of separation out. What it ca...

Meticulous; attentive to every detail

Literal: No detail not attended to

There is no (无) smallness (微) that is not (不) reached (至). The construction works by exhaustion rather than by praise: nothing is said about how good the care is, only that no scale proved too fine for it to have got down to. That is why the phrase is reserved for attention sustained over time rathe...

Approachable; easy to get along with

Literal: Level and easy to approach

The Records of the Grand Historian describes a ruler as 平易近民 — level and easy, and close to the people — his administration plain enough that people came to him of their own accord. 民 became taboo under the Tang, whose second emperor was named Li Shimin, and the phrase was rewritten with 人, which is...

Share complete trust and loyalty

Literal: Livers and galls illuminate each other

Liver (肝) and gall (胆) lighting (照) one another (相). Chinese physiology seats courage in the gall and sincerity in the liver, so the phrase does not mean two friends know each other well — it means each is showing the other the organs that hold what they are made of. The image is deliberately viscer...

Speak from the heart; confide completely

Literal: Push heart, place in belly

Liu Xiu, then still King of Xiao and not yet Emperor Guangwu, had taken the surrender of a large force that remained uneasy about its position. He rode out through the ranks on light horse to inspect them, and the surrendered men said to one another that he 推赤心置人腹中, pushed his own red heart into oth...

Be sworn friends; absolute loyalty

Literal: Friendship of severed necks

Lian Po, a general, had been publicly slighting Lin Xiangru, a courtier promoted over him; Lin kept out of his way, explaining that Zhao survived because the two of them both existed and that a quarrel would finish it. Lian Po came to his gate carrying a rod and asked to be beaten with it. They beca...

Be inseparable; hate to part

Literal: Hard to part, hard to leave

Hard (难) to divide (分) and hard (难) to let go (舍). The doubled 难 sets the two verbs in parallel and covers both halves of a parting, the separating and the releasing, so no part of the departure is left easy. It is stronger and more physical than 依依不舍, and it does not require affection: business par...

Be deeply reluctant to leave

Literal: Attached and unwilling to part

恋 is love that clings, the character in 恋人 and 留恋; doubled and set against 不舍, unwilling (不) to let go (舍), the phrase gives a reluctance rooted in attachment rather than in habit. That is what separates it from 依依不舍, which reports the same scene from outside as a hesitation of the body. Here the ca...

Superficial acquaintance without depth

Literal: Half-face acquaintance

This descends from the Book of Later Han, on Ying Feng, whose memory was such that a man glimpsed once at a half-open door was recognised by him years afterwards. A half-face (半面) acquaintance (之交) is therefore someone you have barely met — the phrase measures the thinness of the connection, not the...