13 Chinese Quotes Teaches You About China

Chinese is a very rich language, full of proverbs and florid language. One of the most excellent parts of the Chinese language is, in fact, the mandarin proverbs.

Understanding some well-known mandarin quotes not just lets you converse better way with native speakers; it also helps you know more about Chinese culture itself. Chinese proverbs provide you a richer lens into the culture that proverbs and sayings in different languages normally would.

These mandarin quotes are top suited for advanced and intermediate students. They are slightly hard to understand a character by character way. For instance, take the Eng expression, you can lead a horse to water you cannot teach it to drink water. 

If this were described in the written style of the proverbs, it would be something like this, Lead horse easy and teach drink water hard. You can just understand it when it is written down and you examine every word, not if somebody says it at a quick speed.

Why these mandarin quotes will assist you to learn more about China?

There’re, loosely speaking, 3 types of well-known mandarin quotes, and they will each teach you at least something different about China, its culture, and people.

Classic mandarin quotes teach you the mandarin/Sino-Asian mindset 

成语, chengyu

These are frequently derived from poetry, a big number of them from the Analects, but also several other sources. They were very poetic in style. The 1st of these we learned that you can learn something from anybody. The proverb is the main part of the longer story, but the actual meaning here is too obvious without knowing the long tale.

Mandarin proverbs also often employ imagery, like geographic features like hills and mountains or animals. For instance, the hills or mountains are high, the ruler is far away. It means that in a huge, distributed headquarters, the organization has no control over the regions. It served me well in knowing how modern these work, both in the West and in China.

Mandarin quotes tech you about war and business 

These are the quotes that come from 1 of 2 main sources of Chinese war philosophy, The Art of War and 36 Stratagems. These were mainly written about the war, but now they are considered to be the bibles for how to conduct state-of-the-art warfare in business.

For instance, somebody explained to me while working in a tech organization in china, that competitive companies would readily employ the plan of sacrifice the plum tree to protect your peach tree, flaming money in temporary loss to make everybody else lose cash, knowing they’d then win due to their ample reserves and having bankrupted every competition.

Modern Mandarin quotes will educate you language

俗语, suyu

Each person loves a fine proverb, but in Eastern cultures, not only are their further proverbs, but they will also get you additional mileage. They are also not extremely hard to learn. For instance, when I was considering leaving my job, somebody advised me that “骑驴找马”.

Exactly, ride a donkey to find the horse, applying that it is simple to find work when you already have one. Another one I utilized often was - “入乡随俗”, exactly if you enter a town, do as is normal, which has the similar meaning as When in Rome City… in Western languages. Using these quotes in daily conversation goes a long way. 

An astonishing number of I thought of as saying/proverbs are just common quotes. Show how poetic the Chinese culture is!

Our favorite Mandarin Quotes teach you about Chinese culture 

Here’s the complete list, they are all quite complex and rich. If you are trying to learn them, just learn one at a time. 

知彼知己，百战不殆 – Know yourself and your enemy, a hundred wars won

zhī bǐ zhī jǐ, bǎi. zhàn bú dài

A quote from Lao Tzu, this classic mandarin war quote is saying it is vital to study your character and that of your enemy before going to the war. Even if you are not going into the war, understanding yourself and knowing every challenge of what you are trying will provide you the ideal chance of success.

海内存知己，天涯若比邻 –To have a close mate in distant lands makes distant realms look as next-door

hǎi nèi cún zhī jǐ, tiān yá ruò bǐ lín

This mandarin quote is a part of a long poetic line, and is an oft-cited mandarin axiom on companionship. It captures very much of the charm of having friends entire over the globe, making the world look as if it is next door. I am talking about it first here because it is this, above any other mandarin quote, that catches the spirit of discovering uneasiness as well as what we are trying to do – to see the planet earth via other’s eyes and come to see everybody as the similar. I do not know of an Eng language equal to this.

山高皇帝远 – The hill is high and the ruler is far away

shān gāo huángdì yuǎn

This is a finely summarized version of how distributed companies work. There is headquarters, and then there’re all the regions. In every region the local administrator is the ruler, knowing they can often do whatever they love, and the emperor, away over the hills in San Francisco city, will never be the wiser. Also, the ruler’s word has slight weight out in the provinces; the local general manager is king.

三人行必有我师 – of any 3 men, 1 could be my tutor 

sān rén xíng bì yǒu wǒ shī

According to Analects of Confucius, literally, of 3 men walking, 1 cold be my tutor. This means you can learn anything from anybody. My Chinese tutor taught me this quote after I struggled to examine it repeatedly. I found that in regular life in China, I would mean something about myself from improbable interactions, and was continually inspired to learn more.

塞翁失马，焉知非福 – an old person lose his horse, who knows what great destiny, is to come?

sàiwēng shī mǎ, yān zhī fēi fú

This mandarin proverb is part of a long tale, the likes of which exist in several cultures (I have heard the same form Middle Eastern too). It all goes something like this – An old person’s horse runs away from the town. The neighbors from the town commiserate, but the older response says, Yes, I have lost a horse. But it’s not essentially the worst thing, let’s wait some time and see what occurs.

Some days later, the horse returns and brings with it a very young horse. The neighbors hear also congratulate the man. What great luck, a free young foal. The old person is circumspect and suggests they have to wait to see what occurs.

The horse grows up and the son of the old man goes riding. But the horse bucks and causes the son to break his leg. The full town says what a bad fortune! I bet you desired your foal never ran away now. The old man gently suggests they want to wait and see.

Sure enough, a war soon breaks out and everybody is drafted into battle. Everybody but the son of the old man, anyway as he cannot fight with his broken leg, good luck again!

Later, a few hoodlums break into the old man’s home and steal his TV and eat the foods he was going to have for lunch. But the TV was not even 4K and the robbers go upset stomach, anyway, probably from the leftover meals. The judges are out as to whether or not this links to the horse.

清水无鱼 – Clear Water has no Fish

qīng shuǐ wú yú

An orientation to the fact that one can earn from the chaos or muddy waters, this quote exists in other cultures as well around the world, like in West, Fish in troubled Waters. I love the imagery of the depressing though; it almost orientations the expression in the Art of War to “disturb the water to catch some fish” 渾水摸魚.  A suggestion to make chaos, it was also the great inspiration for the name of Muddy Waters Research, an organization that researched fake Chinese organizations. This quote exists in every culture we have studied so far, so it is a universal theme.

山重水复疑无路，柳暗花明又一村 – Just as one fears they’ve lost the winding way, a twinkle of hope will appear

shān chóng shuǐ fù yí wú lù, liǔ àn huā míng yòu yī cūn

For me, it’s one of the most poetic mandarin saying. The complete quote translates to – As you pass endless waterways and hills and fear you’ve lost the way, the shadow of willow trees, as well as the bright flowers, will tell you that your objective is the year. I cannot place that in the title tag, it is so lyrical, and it is also quite very long in china, and often just abbreviated to an excerpt of 4 Chinese characters “柳暗花明”.

任重而道远  - The road to Dao is very long and winding 

rèn zhòng ér dào yuǎn

The saying is about how a journey is long and difficult. There’re no shortcuts in life. Only hacks. But they do not make the road shorter, just further efficiently traveled.

磨刀不误砍柴工 - Sharpening the ax would not delay the job

mó dāo bù wù kǎn chái gōng

A quotation, expressed in several cultures (but finely in mandarin that one never will lament great preparation. It comes from a long tale. I just found out of the West equal when looking for the mandarin source – bread well lathered is semi-shaved. Well, I am off to lather bread then…!

强龙不压地头蛇 – The big dragon can’t crush the snake on the surface 

qiáng lóng bù yā dìtóushé

This is a classic mandarin saying that is utilized in startup culture in Chinese, refreshing to giants from overseas never being capable to beat an organization that has a solid ground base in China. There're lots of other reasons companies like eBay, Amazon, UBER struggled in China, but certainly, one of them was this underpinning Chinese culture belief, that possibly manifested itself into reality in several ways.

花无百日红，人无千日好  - Just flowers can't remain in red, people can't remain noble 

huā wú bǎi rì hóng, rén wú qiān rì hǎo

This quote is slightly bleak but is a reference to all we have learned about psychology in the last 50 years, that in the large majority of cases, sheer willpower is not very much reliable. So we must have controls in place - laws, bosses as well as a system. The complete translation is, Flowers do not remain red for 100 days, people don't remain good for 1000 days.

笨鸟先飞 - A silly bird have to take flight first 

bèn niǎo xiān fēi

This quote is good self-deprecating to use when discussing yourself being hard-working, mentioning that if somebody is not very smart, that they have to get up earlier and trying harder. if somebody congratulations you on being early on job, it is a great time to say this.

好马不吃回头草 - A nice horse does not return to old pastures 

hǎo mǎ bù chī huí tóu cǎo

This mandarin quote leads to fact that one can never return to a similar place, e.g. return to an old pasture, country, or company. It is a metaphor for the way we wonder but also it leaves open the major facts that one doesn't go back home as a similar person, nor a pasture in a similar way.