Today, I want to talk about a certain type of idiomatic expression so ubiquitous in both vernacular Chinese speech and writing, yet, only using a limited number of characters to do so. Almost all of them use just 4 characters, leading to one term called four-character idioms. The Chinese term is called 成語 or chengyu, and does not really translate all that well into English. While it translates quite literally to “formed speech”, and also referred to as Chinese idioms, there are more types of idiomatic expressions beyond chengyu. So I guess, we will refer to this particular type of idioms by the Chinese term chengyu.

We do not really know exactly how many chengyu there are. Sources like dictionaries cite anywhere from 5000 to as many as 20 000 chengyu, often differing in how such expressions are defined. But a common characteristic of all of these is a succinct, concise expression rooted in the rules of Literary or Classical Chinese. This makes it possible to compress a rather complex meaning or moral behind the chengyu in an extremely limited character length. Quite often, the literal translation of the chengyu is insufficient to decipher the real meaning, connotation, and proper usage of the idiom.

While there are some chengyu with direct English counterparts, there are other classifications of chengyu that would not have a similarly concise translation. Chengyu could be split into several types– those that convey a story, those that convey the moral behind the story of origin, those that originate in philosophy, and those that originate in literature or culture. For example, 言而無信 (yan er wu xin) originates in the Analects of Confucius, 紙上談兵 (zhi shang tan bing) originates in historical records pertaining to a Warring States period General called Zhao Kuo, and 瓜田李下 (gua tian li xia) conveys a moral behind the backing poem called 君子行 (jun zi xing).

Another way chengyu can be classified is by their morphological structure. Some chengyu are formed by a subject and predicate, such as 紙上談兵, while others are interrelated, such as 情投意合 (qíng tóu yì hé). Some might have a conditional structure, such as 不入虎穴, 焉得虎子 (bù rù hǔxué，yān dé hǔzǐ).

The history of chengyu is not quite well described, at least from the literature I have consulted. However, the source material these idioms derive from span a long time in the history of Chinese culture, philosophy, and literature. Myths, fables, historical accounts, and literary works can serve as source material for chengyu, and one of the most recent ones to be considered as such comes from as recent as 1998. Called 塵埃落定 (chén āi luò dìng), or “the dust has settled” or “everything has ended”. this chengyu comes from a Chinese novel published in 1998.

While a majority of these chengyu have four characters, there are some that have 3 characters, and some that have as many as 16. One example is the chengyu 敲邊鼓 (qiāo biāngǔ), quite literally to “beat a nearby drum”, which carries a negative connotation today as “someone who butts into other people’s conversations”, although it did use to refer to “someone who is trying to support others in an argument”. On the longer extreme, we have 醉翁之意不在酒 (zuìwēng zhī yì bú zài jiǔ), literally “a drunkard’s attention is not directed at wine”, which is used to refer to a person who has ulterior motives.

But the phenomenon of such idioms is not restricted to Mandarin Chinese; as the Chinese languages have interacted with other major East Asian languages over time, the chengyu in Mandarin Chinese has entered use in languages like Japanese and Korean, and even Vietnamese. This has also spurred the innovation of native idioms in those languages.

For our first example, we will turn towards the Japanese language, which calls chengyu 四字熟語 or yojijukugo, quite literally “four-character idioms”. Many yojijukugo derive from Mandarin Chinese chengyu, but examples of native Japanese idioms include 傍目八目 (okame hachimoku), used to describe a bystander’s vantage point, and 一期一会 (ichigo ichie), used to describe a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. However, the yojijukugo does extend to non-idiomatic expressions, which greatly outnumber their idiomatic counterparts, and this includes the term 四字熟語 itself.

Next, we will go over to the Korean Peninsula, where Korean is predominantly spoken. Called sajaseong-eo, a literal translation of 四字熟語, one of my most favourite examples is 대마불사 (dae-ma-bool-sa), literally “a big horse does not die”, meaning “too big to fail”. While this expression is commonly used today in the field of finance, business, and economics, it is also used in the board game baduk, which is based on weiqi or go. Here, the expression takes on a more literal form — a group of stones can be too big to die easily, although it was also used to mean “if you are caught, it is a lost cause. Thus, you must make the most of it”. The latter refers to the risk of forming a large group of stones, I presume.

Lastly, we have Vietnam, with the thành ngữ, which derives from the Chinese term chengyu. Vietnamese thành ngữ is remarkable for having a diversity of native Vietnamese expressions, which have no Chinese counterpart. This subset of thành ngữ is called thành ngữ thuần Việt. These expressions were once written in the logographic chữ Nôm, but are mostly written in the Latin alphabet today. One example is 𢢂𨐮𢢂𧃵, or Ghét cay ghét đắng, which translates to “hate spiciness, hate bitterness”, used to mean to have an extreme and utter hatred. Another example is 幔𡗶𥴜𡐙 or Màn trời chiếu đất, which literally translates to “use the sky as a curtain, and the land as a mat”. While it sounds very poetic, it is a rather euphemistic expression for an occasion where many people become homeless, especially after a disaster.

Chengyu and its counterparts are still somewhat commonly used today, though I can really truly speak for Mandarin Chinese chengyu itself. There are many dictionaries compiling the vast collections of chengyu, and these expressions were taught and encouraged during my schooling years in Chinese classes. Learning these expressions certainly benefits learners in attaining fluency in Chinese and the other languages that use similar expressions, and consulting literature could help build up understanding in meaning and usage of chengyu.