Chinese Proverbs and Idioms 成语俗语 · 学得出、说得出
A proverb is the shortest thing Chinese has for an idea. Four characters carry a whole argument about work, money, family or study, and people use them daily without thinking. Each card below gives you the characters, the pinyin, what it says literally, and where it came from.
Why these, and not a bigger list为什么只收这些
Most proverb sites list four hundred sayings and half of them never come up in real conversation. We kept twenty-four and dropped everything we could not trace. Twelve come from a book you could look up: Han Feizi, Lüshi Chunqiu, Huainanzi, the Analects, Mencius, Liezi, Guanzi, Han Yu's On the Need for Study, and the Strategies of the States. The other twelve are everyday speech. We label them that way instead of inventing an origin.
One honest warning
A few famous sayings have a story attached that grew after the fact. 铁杵磨成针 is often told as something that happened to a young Li Bai; no historian has confirmed it. Where that happens, the card says so. A proverb is still worth learning even when the tale behind it is invented, but you should know which one you are buying.
Pick a theme按题材选
Each theme is six sayings with full explanations. Every card carries the source and a note on when the saying actually fits, because half the wrong uses of these come from applying them at the wrong moment.
Next step接下来
These twenty-four give you the idea. Making them your own needs vocabulary and a sentence pattern to put them in.