Chengyu

Chengyu are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expressions, most of which consist of four Chinese characters. Chengyu were widely used in Literary Chinese and are still common in written vernacular Chinese writing and in the spoken language today. According to the most stringent definition, there are about 5,000 chengyu in the Chinese language, though some dictionaries list over 20,000. Chengyu are considered the collected wisdom of the Chinese culture, and contain the experiences, moral concepts, and admonishments from previous generations of Chinese speakers. Chengyu still play an important role in Chinese conversation and education. Chengyu are one of four types of formulaic expressions, which also include collocations, two-part allegorical sayings called xiehouyu, and proverbs.
While not the only idioms in Chinese, and not always four characters long, they are often referred to as Chinese idioms or four-character idioms.

Origins, construction, and interpretation

Chengyu are mostly derived from ancient literature, including the pre-Qin classics, poetry from all periods of Chinese history, and late imperial vernacular novels and short stories. A small number were constructed in the 19th and early 20th centuries from Western source materials. Among the early classical literature, the lyrical imagery from the Classic of Poetry, and the detailed stories recorded in the Zuo Zhuan and the Records of the Grand Historian serve as particularly rich source materials for chengyu. Since the Shijing poems consist of four-character lines, some chengyu are direct quotes from the Classic of Poetry. For example, 'ten-thousand year lifespan without bound', a traditional expression to wish someone a long life that often appears on bowls and tableware, quotes the poem "Tian Bao" in the Lesser Court Hymns section of the Classic of Poetry. More commonly, however, chengyu are created by succinctly paraphrasing or summarizing the original text, usually by selecting the most salient characters from the passage in question and inserting any necessary classical grammatical particles.
As such, chengyu are fossilized expressions that use the vocabulary and follow the syntactic rules of Literary Chinese. Consequently, they convey information more compactly than normal vernacular speech or writing. They may contain subject and predicate and act as an independent clause, or they may play the role of any part of speech in a sentence, acting syntactically as an adjective, adverb, verb, or noun phrase. In both speech and writing, they serve to succinctly convey a complex or multifaceted situation, scene, or concept, and used fittingly and elegantly, they also mark a speaker or writer's erudition.
The meaning of a chengyu usually surpasses the sum of the meanings carried by the four characters, as chengyu are generally meant to convey the message or moral of the myth, story or historical event from which they were derived. Thus, even after translation into modern words and syntax, chengyu in isolation are often unintelligible without additional explanation. Since they often contain a classical allusion, known as a , elementary and secondary school students in greater China learn chengyu as part of the classical curriculum in order to study the context from which the chengyu was born.
Often the four characters reflect the moral behind the story rather than the story itself. For example, the phrase "" is based on a historical account where the general Xiang Yu ordered his troops to destroy all cooking utensils and boats after crossing a river into the enemy's territory. He won the battle because of this "no-retreat" strategy. Thus, the idiom is used as a verb phrase with the meaning "to make an all-out effort to achieve success by the deliberate removal of recourse or backup." Similar phrases are known in the West, such as "Burning one's boats", "burning one's bridges", "Point of no return" or "Crossing the Rubicon".
Another example is , whose meaning relates to the appearance of misconduct or impropriety. It is derived from an excerpt of a Han-era poem. The poem includes the lines 'don't adjust your shoes in a melon field, and don't tidy your hat under the plum trees', admonishing the reader to avoid situations where, however innocent, he might be suspected of doing wrong. The idiom is impossible to understand without the background knowledge of the origin of the phrase.
Some idioms have had their literal meanings overtake their original ones. For example, 'wind from an empty cave', despite now being used to describe rumors without source, originally referred to rumors with actual, solid sources or reasons. Likewise, 'bare-faced facing the emperor' is now used to describe beauty that does not require make-up, e.g., when entering court, while its original meaning was "to be confident in one's true look".
However, not all chengyu have stories to draw morals from. An example is 'speaking, yet without trust', referring to one who cannot be trusted despite what he says, an essentially deceitful person. It is generally acknowledged as a chengyu as it comes from the Analects. The idiom is succinct in its original meaning and would likely be intelligible to anyone learned in formal written Chinese, though is no longer commonly used as a verb.
There are a few chengyu that are not four characters in length. An example is the seven-character 'The Old Drunkard's attention is not directed towards his wine'. This is a direct quote from Ouyang Xiu's essay An Account of Old Drunkard's Pavilion, in which the author, as the Old Drunkard, expresses his true intention of enjoying the scenery of the mountains and rivers as he drinks. As an idiom, it expresses the situation where one does something with an ulterior though benign motive in mind.
Some chengyu have English equivalents. For example, 'speak not from the bosom' and 'to speak with one's tongue in one's cheek' share idiomatic meanings. The Chinese not having conducted maritime explorations of the North Atlantic during imperial times, the expression 'one corner of an ice mountain' is a rare example of a chengyu that emerged in the early 20th century after contact with the West as a translation of the expression "tip of the iceberg," thus sharing both their literal and idiomatic meanings. Another expression 'extracting chestnuts from the fire', originating from a La Fontaine fable, means "to be duped into taking risks for someone else," used in much the same way as the expression "cat's paw" in English is another example of an "international" chengyu. Though they are recent in origin, they are constructed using the vocabulary and syntax of Literary Chinese and fits within the four-character scheme, making them chengyu.
Chinese idioms can also serve as a guide through Chinese culture. Chengyu teach about motifs that were previously common in Chinese literature and culture. For example, idioms with nature motifse.g., mountains, water, and the Moonare numerous. Works considered masterpieces of Chinese literaturesuch as the Four Great Classical Novels – serve as the source for many idioms, which in turn condense and retell the story.
All Chinese people know idioms, though the total number known by any one individual will depend on their background. Idioms are such an important part of Chinese popular culture that there is a game called 'connect the chengyu' that involves someone calling out an idiom, with someone else then being supposed to think of another idiom to link up with the first one, so that the last character of the first idiom is the same as the first character of the second idiom, and so forth.

Chinese examples

The following three examples show that the meaning of the idiom can be totally different by only changing one character.

: "One day, a thousand autumns."
* Meaning: implies rapid changes; one day equals a thousand years
: "One day, a thousand miles."
* Meaning: implies rapid progress; traveling a thousand miles in a day
: "One day, three autumns."
* Meaning: greatly missing someone; one day feels as long as three years

Chengyu	Gloss	Meaning	Etymology
	kill two eagles with one arrow	kill two birds with one stone, i.e. to achieve two aims at once	See History of the Northern Dynasties
	break the cauldrons and sink the boats	burn bridges, i.e. commit oneself irrevocably	See Battle of Julu
	call a deer a horse	deliberately misrepresent	See Zhao Gao
	so happy as to forget Shu	indulge in pleasures	See Liu Shan
	to say three in the morning and four in the evening	always changing, a change without any substantive difference	See Zhuangzi
	a frog in the bottom of the well	a person with limited outlook	See Zhuangzi
	grind an iron bar down to a fine needle	to persevere in a difficult task	See Li Bai
	guard a tree-stump to wait for rabbits	wait idly for a reward	See Han Feizi
	to mend the pen after sheep are lost	close the stable door after the horse has bolted, i.e. try too late to prevent harm	See Warring States Records
	Three men make a tiger	repeated rumor becomes a fact	See Warring States Records
	return the jade to Zhao	to return something intact to its rightful owner	See Mr. He's jade
	old man from the frontier lost his horse	a blessing in disguise	See Huainanzi
	carve the boat in search of the sword	approach without considering the reality of a situation	See Lüshi Chunqiu
	take chestnuts out of the fire	Someone acting in another's interest	Derived from The Monkey and the Cat
	carrying a bramble and ask for punishment	offer a humble apology	See Lian Po
	talk about military tactics on paper	theoretical discussion useless in practice	See Zhao Kuo
	to add feet when drawing a snake	to improve something unnecessarily	See Warring States Records
	to add eyes when painting a dragon	adding the finishing touch to something	See Zhang Sengyou
	playing the guqin to a cow	to communicate well, you need to understand your audience	See Mouzi Lihuolun
	swallow like a tiger and devour like a wolf	devouring food quickly and in a messy manner
	to wear embroidered clothing and return to one's hometown	return to humble origins after making it big
	as easy as turning over one's hand	for something to be very easy	See Mencius
	to learn the walk of Handan	to imitate others, and lose one's own abilities in the process	See Learning the Walk of Handan

Multiple chengyu are sometimes used together in set expressions for ceremonial or festive greetings. For example, numbered New Year greetings beginning with the characters for one through ten are commonly used during the Chinese New Year to express wishes for success, health, and happiness.

Number	Chengyu	Meaning
1 :		Ship with a single sail, sailing smoothly; success without obstacles
2 :		Two dragons soaring; aspirations for soaring sucess and progress
3 :		The arrival of good fortune; metaphor for winter's end
4 :		Peace and safety throughout the four seasons
5 :		The five blessings arrive: health, longevity, prosperity, virtue, and peace
6 :		Everything goes smoothly; the number is a near homophone of meaning flowing/smooth without hindrance
7 :		The seven stars shine brightly, invoking the auspiciousness of the Big Dipper Constellation
8 :		Wealth arrives from all directions; means all directions, similar to how there are four cardinal and four intercardinal directions
9 :		United in heart forever; is a homophone of ; hence, conveying a sense of eternity and longevity
10 :		Perfect in every way; the number 10 in Chinese can have connotations of fullness and completeness