不亦乐乎

bu yi le hu: Short for, "you pengzi yuan fang lai, bu yi le hu," the first sentence of Confucius' Analects, perhaps the most famous of all classical Chinese books. Translation would read something like, "Isn't it a pleasure when friends visit from afar"--prompting the values of hospitality to outsiders that you'll see in common folks whenever you visit China. Thinking these days of my incredible experience on the BYLH crew back in 2010... www.booeylehoo.org

狼狈为奸

lang bei wei jian: In trying to catch a meal, the wolf haplessly kept running into the flock of sheep, scattering them and ending up hungry. The clever ferret, who was too small to catch a giant sheep but who was also starving, saw an opportunity. "Wolf! Let me help you!" said the ferret, climbing onto the wolf's back. The ferret steered his new friend slowly towards a slower, sickly sheep, then told the wolf exactly when to pounce--with great success! The two conspirators then enjoyed a feast together.

...just picked up this story in class, talking about symbiosis in different ecosystems. I clarified, saying symbiosis is a good thing for all parties in the ecosystem--whereas lang bei wei jian has a bit more negative connotation.

人定胜天

ren ding sheng tian: Man can conquer nature... reminded of that every time I see the Beijing skyline. Question remains: can man conquer human nature?

悬崖勒马

xuan ya le ma: To impress a girl, the soldier took his horse a drove it north to the steppe, where could be found a massive canyon over which he could leap, impressing the lady and winning her heart. Charging as hard as he could to the brink, at the last second he thought otherwise and, pulling up on the reins, stopped himself and the horse from leaping almost certainly to their death.

指鹿为马

zhi lu wei ma: Zhao Gao, the most powerful eunuch in the Qin dynasty court, was contemplating treason but needed to see whether the most important officials would side with him in the uprising. As a test, he brought a deer to present to the Second Emperor. Upon introducing the animal, Zhao Gao asked for comment on his lovely horse. "My dear Zhao Gao," the emperor laughed, "I believe you are mistaken, this animal is surely a deer, not a horse!" The emperor asked the attending officials their thoughts, and one by one, each sought to either curry favor with Zhao Gao--"What a lovely horse!"--or else remained defiant, echoing the emperor's observation. In the coming days, each defiant offical was summoned to Zhao Gao and executed on the spot.

天要下雨，娘要嫁人

tian yao xia yu, niang yao jia ren: A girl was speaking with her mother, trying to decide on a suitable day to be married. They consulted the almanac, considering her year of birth and zodiac sign, the groom's sign, and most importantly, the history of weather on different days of the year. "No one wants a rainy day for their wedding," said the girl. "You have just as much chance of controlling the weather as controlling a herd of charging yaks. When a lady wants to marry, she'll marry, and when the sky wants to rain, it'll rain."

山高水远

shan di huang yuan: In the dragon-toothed mountains of Guizhou, a poor boy stole a sweet melon from a elderly melon seller. The boy made no attempt to hide his actions, nonchalantly grabbing a melon as he walked by. "What are you doing!?" the seller shouted. "Taking a melon." The boy mentioned. "You have to pay for that!" was yelled after him as he walked away.

"If you need money for the melon, chase after me and take it--I have nothing," the boy said. "But... but it's the emperor's edict! You can't steal!" complained the melon dealer, looking around hopelessly for a constable. "Oh... it's an edict, then? Old man, don't you see? The mountains are tall, and the emperor is far away."

蜻蜓点水

qing ting dian shui: "The dragonfly darts about, rippling the water gently as it moves quickly from place to place."

守株待兔

shou zhu dai tu: In the middle of a long day in the fields, a farmer rested for a few minutes under a tree. While he was resting, a rabbit skittered across the grass in front of him and crashed into a rock. The farmer walked over and checked the rabbit: dead. 'How incredible," said the farmer. "I have to sit under this tree more often!" And he did, day after day, quitting work and waiting for another rabbit to take home for dinner. Day after day, he became more and more hungry, waiting for the serendipity of that first resting time under the tree to repeat itself.

井底之蛙

jing di zhi wa: A frog lived his whole life at the bottom of a damp well, enjoying the puddles and flies and occasionally looking up to the small circle of sky above. One day, a crow landed on the rim of the well high above the frog. Startled, the frog asked, "How is it that you can fly around up there? There's not enough sky for a bird half your size!" The bird shouted back down, "There is more than enough sky for me. There world up here is much different and much bigger than you think. You should check it out sometime."

惊弓之鸟

jing gong zhi niao: The king loved to hunt, and one day took several of his bodyguards out into the forest to shoot down some birds with their bows and arrows. One bodyguard, a particularly ambitious man looking for a promotion, admonished the others: "What are you doing with those arrows?! There's no need for me to even shoot to bring down a bird. The mere sight of me behind a bow will scare the animal to death." A bird flapped out of a nearby tree, and as the man cocked back his bow to aim his imaginary arrow, the flying bird dropped out of the sky as if it was shot. "There! You see! Scared to death of me!" The bodyguard led the group away as his friend scampered out from behind a bush, blood on his hands from where he had broken the bird's wing a moment before.

滥竽充数

lan yu chong shu: The king of the land adored fine music, and called for an orchestra of hundreds of musicians to play at the palace. Seeing the hordes of musicians getting ready to play, a passerby asked what's going on. "They're all going to play for the king!" The passerby joined the throng, grabbing a bamboo shoot as he walked and fashioning it into a flute on his way to the palace. In the orchestral pit he sat down alongside 100 other flutists, and as they began to play, did his best to mime the flute players beside him. After the performance, he was paid for his fine renditions of the king's favorite songs, having never blown one note.

画蛇添足

hua she tian zu: A poor man was putting a new roof on his home and enlisted the help of some other villagers. After a long day of work, the man offered up a jug of wine, not enough for all of the workers. He said: "I'll give the jug to the man who can draw a snake the fastest." One of the workers quickly drew a squiggly line in the dirt and believed, for a moment, he was done. He looked at some other workers around him, working hard and perfecting their drawings. Accordingly, the fast one began to add more detail to his snake--a few extra lines, giving the snake feet like a salamander. Before he could finish, the poor man approved the drawing of another worker: a simple drawing of a squiggly line. "But that's exactly what I drew!" the fast worker said. "That's not what I see here," said the poor man. "We all know snakes don't have feet."