10 Chinese Idioms About the Moon & Reunion for Mid-Autumn Festival

Perfect happiness

Literal: Flowers bloom, moon is full

Flowers (花) at their best (好), the moon (月) full (圆). Both halves name a peak that is by definition brief — blossom and full moon each last a few days — so the phrase carries its own transience inside it, which is very Chinese and largely invisible in translation. In practice it has become a wedding...

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...

Work day and night

Literal: Wear stars crown moon

To wear (披) the stars (星) and be crowned with (戴) the moon (月) — a person who leaves before dawn and returns after dark, so that the sky is never light when they are outdoors. The phrase belongs to vernacular literature and is applied to farmers, travellers and students. It differs from ordinary har...

Boundless natural beauty and romance

Literal: Wind moon without boundaries

Wind (风) and moon (月) without (无) bound (边) — the two standing together for natural beauty and, by extension, for romance. The phrase is the answer to a famous puzzle: the two characters 虫二, carved on Mount Tai and elsewhere, are 風月 with their outer strokes removed, so the borders are literally gone...

Grow old together; lifelong partnership

Literal: White heads together in old age

White (白) heads (头) reaching old age (老) side by side (偕). The Book of Songs supplies the wish — 及尔偕老, to grow old with you — and the white hair was added later to give it a picture. It is a blessing rather than a description: nobody says it about a marriage in progress. It is said at weddings and a...

Return to one's roots; go back home

Literal: Falling leaves return to roots

Fallen (落) leaves (叶) returning (归) to the root (根). The botany carries the argument: the leaf drops at the foot of the tree that made it and goes back into the soil that fed it, so the return is presented as natural process rather than as a decision anybody took. Chinese uses it above all of people...

Changing rapidly; improving daily

Literal: Day new month different

New (新) by the day (日), different (异) by the month (月). The phrasing echoes the basin inscription quoted in the Great Learning — 苟日新，日日新，又日新, if you can renew yourself one day then do it daily, and again — where the subject is moral cultivation and the renewal is deliberate. The idiom kept the rhyth...

Everlasting; eternal

Literal: Heaven is long, earth is lasting

This idiom derives from Chapter 7 of the Daoist classic 'Tao Te Ching' (道德经) by Laozi: 'Heaven and earth are long-lasting.' The phrase uses the long-lasting (长) heaven (天) and enduring (久) earth (地) as metaphors for permanence and durability. It gained romantic connotations through Tang Dynasty poet...

Return with rich rewards

Literal: Fully loaded and return

Loaded (载) full (满) and coming home (归). The image is a boat or a cart, and the phrase covers the return leg specifically, which is where its satisfaction comes from: the risk is over, the result is aboard, and all that is left is arriving. It is said of shopping trips, conferences, fishing and nego...

Embrace authenticity

Literal: Return to simplicity and truth

In the Strategies of the Warring States the scholar Yan Chu turns down a king's patronage and takes his leave, and the chapter closes with a verdict on him rather than a speech by him: 归真反璞，则终身不辱 — go back (归) to what is genuine (真) and return (返) to the uncarved jade (璞), and you will not be disgra...