Many Chinese proverbs exist, some of which have entered English in forms that are of varying degrees of faithfulness. A notable example is "
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" is a common saying that originated from a Chinese proverb. The quotation is from Chapter 64 of the Dao De Jing ascribed to Laozi, although it is also erroneously ascribed to his contempor ...
", from the ''
Dao De Jing
The ''Tao Te Ching'' (, ; ) is a Chinese classic text written around 400 BC and traditionally credited to the sage Laozi, though the text's authorship, date of composition and date of compilation are debated. The oldest excavated portion da ...
'', ascribed to
Laozi
Laozi (), also known by numerous other names, was a semilegendary ancient Chinese Taoist philosopher. Laozi ( zh, ) is a Chinese honorific, generally translated as "the Old Master". Traditional accounts say he was born as in the state
...
.
They cover all aspects of life, and are widely used in everyday speech, in contrast to the decline of the use of proverbs in Western cultures.
The majority are distinct from high literary forms such as
xiehouyu
''Xiehouyu'' is a kind of Chinese proverb consisting of two elements: the former segment presents a novel scenario while the latter provides the rationale thereof. One would often only state the first part, expecting the listener to know the se ...
and
chengyu
''Chengyu'' () are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expression, most of which consist of four characters. ''Chengyu'' were widely used in Classical Chinese and are still common in vernacular Chinese writing and in the spoken language t ...
, and are ''common sayings'' of usually anonymous authorship, originating through "little tradition" rather than "great tradition".
Collections and sources
In the preface and introduction to his 1875 categorized collection of Chinese proverbs, Wesleyan missionary William Scarborough observed that there had theretofore been very few European-language works on the subject, listing
John Francis Davis
Sir John Francis Davis, 1st Baronet (16 July 179513 November 1890) was a British diplomat and sinologist who served as second Governor of Hong Kong from 1844 to 1848. Davis was the first President of Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong.
Backgro ...
' 1823 ''Chinese Moral Maxims'', Paul Hubert Perny's 1869 ''Proverbes Chinois'', and
Justus Doolittle Justus Doolittle (; Pinyin: ''Lú Gōngmíng''; Foochow Romanized: ''Lù Gŭng-mìng''; June 23, 1824, Rutland, New York - June 15, 1880, Clinton, New York) was an American Board missionary to China.
Life
Justus Doolittle was born in Rutland, New ...
's 1872 ''Vocabulary and Handbook of the Chinese Language'' as exhaustive on the subject to that point.
He also observed that there were few collections in Chinese languages.
Two such collections he named as ''Chien-pên-hsien-wen'', "A Book of Selected Virtuous Lore" (a.k.a. ''Tsêng-huang'', "Great Collection"), and the ''Ming-hsin-pao-chien'', "A Precious Mirror to throw light on the mind".
He observed that the proverbs themselves are numerous, with the whole of China probably able to supply some 20,000, a figure that modern scholars agree with.
Sources of such proverbs he found in the aforementioned collections, in the ''Yu-hsio'' ("Youth's Instructor"), the 1859 ''Chieh-jen-i'', the 1707 ''Chia-pao-chulan-ci'' ("Complete Collection of Family Treasures"), the ''Sheng-yu'' ("Sacred Edict"), the ''Kan-ying p'ien'' ("Book of Rewards and Punishments"), and ''Chutzu-chia-yen'' ("The Household Rules of the Philosopher Chu").
The
modern popularity of Chinese proverbs in Chinese literature led to an explosion in the availability of dictionaries, glossaries, and studies of them in the middle to late 20th century.
Definition, forms, and character
There are two set literary forms in Chinese that have been much studied:
*
Xiehouyu
''Xiehouyu'' is a kind of Chinese proverb consisting of two elements: the former segment presents a novel scenario while the latter provides the rationale thereof. One would often only state the first part, expecting the listener to know the se ...
(, pinyin: ''xiēhòuyǔ''); two-part expression whose latter part is omitted
*
Chengyu
''Chengyu'' () are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expression, most of which consist of four characters. ''Chengyu'' were widely used in Classical Chinese and are still common in vernacular Chinese writing and in the spoken language t ...
(, pinyin: chéngyŭ); most often 4-
character
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
phrases that carry conventional wisdom
However, Chinese proverbs are primarily ''not'' these high literary forms, but rather the product of thousands of years of an oral culture of peasant people, often illiterate.
The informal and oft-quoted proverbs of everyday conversation are largely not the sayings of Confucius, but are rather of anonymous origin. Many sayings commonly attributed to Confucius, often in the form "Confucius said...", are not correctly attributed, or their attribution is disputed by scholars.
Whilst the sayings of philosophers such as Laozi and Confucius form part of the "great tradition" (a notion introduced by
Robert Redfield
Robert Redfield (December 4, 1897 – October 16, 1958) was an American anthropologist and ethnolinguist, whose ethnographic work in Tepoztlán, Mexico, is considered a landmark of Latin American ethnography. He was associated with the University ...
in 1956) amongst Chinese
literati over the centuries; proverbs largely come from the "little tradition" of the overwhelming peasant majority of Chinese society.
Professor of linguistics John Rosenhow of the University of Chicago characterized most such proverbs as "witty, pomposity-piercing proverbs for which peasants are famous all over the world".
Scarborough observed that wit, humour, and puns can be found in abundance.
In terms of form, Scarborough tried to characterize ''Su-'hua'', "Common Sayings", more clearly than a metaphorical description by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...
and by the descriptions of
proverb
A proverb (from la, proverbium) is a simple and insightful, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and use formulaic speech, formulaic language. A proverbial phra ...
in several contemporary dictionaries, which he stated to be inaccurate descriptions.
He observed that most proverbs were
couplets
A couplet is a pair of successive lines of metre in poetry. A couplet usually consists of two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (or closed) couplet, each of the ...
, which he divided into three major groups (with a smaller number of minor outliers):
* Antithetical couplets incorporate
antithesis
Antithesis (Greek for "setting opposite", from "against" and "placing") is used in writing or speech either as a proposition that contrasts with or reverses some previously mentioned proposition, or when two opposites are introduced together f ...
; usually have 7 words per line, and have rules about the tones in each line and a prohibition on repetition.
* Connected sentences have fewer rules about composition; but they again incorporate antithesis, a very pointed one.
* Rhymes, with corresponding tones.
Rosenhow made similar observations on the difficulty of aligning Chinese proverbs with western definitions of the idea, stating that the closest equivalent Chinese term is ''yanyu'', which itself does not have a single meaning.
Sun Zhiping's 1982 definition of ''yanyu'' (translated and recounted by Rosenhow) is "complete sentences, expressing a judgement or an inference,
hich
Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...
may be used to validate
r to
R, or r, is the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ar'' (pronounced ), plural ''ars'', or in Irelan ...
represent
ne'sown
ndividualviews,
hereas''chenyu'', ''xieouyu'', and ''suyu'' generally can only serve as parts of a sentence,
nd areused to give a concrete description of expression of the quality, state, degree, etc. of some objective material phenomenon".
Rosenhow notes however that some sentence fragments also fall within the category of Chinese proverbs, with
ellipsis
The ellipsis (, also known informally as dot dot dot) is a series of dots that indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text without altering its original meaning. The plural is ellipses. The term origin ...
accounting for their fragmentary natures, and that a better definition is the ''purpose'' of Chinese proverbs, which is morally instructional; informing people what to do in a given situation by reference to familiar ideas, and repeatedly used in conversation in order to promote and continue a shared set of values and ways of going about things.
Influence
Numerous Asian proverbs, in particular,
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
,
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
, and
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
ones, appear to be derived from older Chinese proverbs, although in often is impossible to be completely sure about the direction of cultural influences (and hence, the origins of a particular proverb or idiomatic phrase).
Falsely ascribed origin
In English, various phrases are used and claimed to be of Chinese origin – "..., as they say in China" or "An ancient Chinese proverb says...", and may be specifically attributed to
Confucius
Confucius ( ; zh, s=, p=Kǒng Fūzǐ, "Master Kǒng"; or commonly zh, s=, p=Kǒngzǐ, labels=no; – ) was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. C ...
, sometimes facetiously. Notable examples include:
*
A picture is worth a thousand words
"A picture is worth a thousand words" is an adage in multiple languages meaning that complex and sometimes multiple ideas can be conveyed by a single still image, which conveys its meaning or essence more effectively than a mere verbal descrip ...
– in the modern English form attributed to Fred R. Barnard in the 1920s. The 1949 ''Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Familiar Phrases'' quotes Barnard as saying he called it "a Chinese proverb, so that people would take it seriously."
[
*citing:
*:
*see also:
*: Contains pictures and transcriptions of the original ads] An actual
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
expression, "Hearing something a hundred times isn't better than seeing it once" (,
p ''bǎi wén bù rú yī jiàn'') is sometimes claimed to be the equivalent.
*
Chinese word for "crisis"
The Chinese word for "crisis" () is, in Western popular culture, frequently but incorrectly said to be written with two Chinese characters signifying "danger" (, ) and "opportunity" (, ). The second character is a component of the Chinese word ...
– the claim that the Chinese word for "crisis", is "danger" + "opportunity" is a
folk etymology
Folk etymology (also known as popular etymology, analogical reformation, reanalysis, morphological reanalysis or etymological reinterpretation) is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more famili ...
, based on a misreading of the second
character
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
''jī''.
*
May you live in interesting times
"May you live in interesting times" is an English expression that is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. While seemingly a blessing, the expression is normally used ironically; life is better in "uninteresting times" of pe ...
– Despite being widely attributed as a Chinese curse, there is no known equivalent expression in Chinese. The nearest related Chinese expression translates as "Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos." () The expression originates from Volume 3 of the 1627 short story collection by
Feng Menglong
Feng Menglong (1574–1646), courtesy names Youlong (), Gongyu (), Ziyou (), or Eryou (), was a Chinese historian, novelist, and poet of the late Ming Dynasty. He was born in Changzhou County, now part of Suzhou, in Jiangsu Province.
Life
Fen ...
, ''
Stories to Awaken the World
''Stories to Awaken the World'' (醒世恆言; ''Xingshi Hengyan''), is a Chinese story anthology compiled by Feng Menglong and published in 1627, composed of 40 vernacular stories. It follows '' Stories Old and New'' (1620) and ''Stories to Cautio ...
''.
Modern popularity
The widespread use of Chinese proverbs in everyday speech, even in the 21st century, contrasts with the decline of the use of proverbs in Western cultures.
As stated earlier, they have historically been a part of a long-standing oral culture amongst the Chinese peasantry, and their continued existence in an age of more widespread literacy and written communication is explained by the political events in China of the 20th century.
One factor was the
May 4th Movement
The May Fourth Movement was a Chinese Anti-imperialism, anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement which grew out of student protests in Beijing on May 4, 1919. Students gathered in front of Tiananmen (The Gate of Heavenly Peace) to p ...
not only encouraging vernacular language over
Literary Chinese
Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning
"literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning
"literar ...
but at the same time including proverbs into modern Chinese literature, exemplified by Cheng Wangdao's inclusion of popular sayings in the chapter on quotations in his 1932 ''Introduction to Rhetoric'' and by the parting admonition to writers in Hu Shih's 1917 ''Tentative suggestions for Literary Reform'': "Do not avoid popular expressions."
The
Potato School of writing even required the use of proverbs.
Another factor was the deliberate use of proverbs as a rhetorical technique by leaders such as
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
addressing primarily peasant audiences.
Mao encouraged others to do the same as he himself did, in his 1942 Talks on Literature and Art at the
Yan'an Forum
The Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art () was a May 1942 forum held at the city of Yan'an in Communist-controlled China and significant event in the Yan'an Rectification Movement. It is most notable for the speeches given by Mao Zedong, later edit ...
, stressing to writers the importance of the use of folk idioms and proverbs in order to make their writing accessible to the majority of their audience.
Parallels to English proverbs
Scarborough noted that there are many proverbs with parallels to European ones, including: "Too many cooks spoil the broth," with the parallel "Seven hands and eight feet," "a pig in a poke" with the parallel "a cat in a bag," and "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," with "Wherever you go, talk as the people of the place talk."
See also
*
Korean proverbs
A Korean proverb (, Sok-dam) is a concise idiom in the Korean language which describes a fact in a metaphorical way for instruction or satire. The term (Sok-dam, Korean proverb) was first used in Korea during the Joseon Dynasty, but proverbs were ...
*
Japanese proverbs
A may take the form of:
*a ,
*an , or
*a .
Although "proverb" and "saying" are practically synonymous, the same cannot be said about "idiomatic phrase" and "four-character idiom". Not all ''kan'yōku'' and ''yojijukugo'' are proverbial. For in ...
References
Sources
*
* ()
*
Further reading
* ()
*
{{Asia topic , Proverbs of
English words and phrases