Chinese proverbs

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' 1823 Chinese Moral Maxims, Paul Hubert Perny's 1869 Proverbes Chinois, and Justus Doolittle's 1872 Vocabulary and Handbook of the Chinese Language as exhaustive on the subject to that point.[4] He also observed that there were few collections in Chinese languages.[5] 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".[6]

He observed that the proverbs themselves are numerous, with the whole of China probably able to supply some 20,000,[7] a figure that modern scholars agree with.[2] 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 聖語Sheng-yu ("Sacred Edict"), the ‌Kan-ying p'ien ("Book of Rewards and Punishments"), and 主子家言Chutzu-chia-yen ("The Household Rules of the Philosopher Chu").[8]

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.[9]

There are two set literary forms in Chinese that have been much studied:[1]

• Xiehouyu (Chinese: 歇後語, pinyin: xiēhòuyǔ); two-part expression whose latter part is omitted
• Chengyu (Chinese: 成語, pinyin: chéngyŭ); most often 4-character 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.[1] The informal and oft-quoted proverbs of everyday conversation are largely not the sayings of Confucius, but are rather of anonymous origin.[10] Many sayings commonly attributed to Confucius, often in the form "Confucius said...", are not correctly attributed, or their attribution is disputed by scholars.[11][12] Whilst the sayings of philosophers such as Laozi and Confucius form part of the "great tradition" (a notion introduced by Robert Redfield in 1956) amongst Chinese literati over the centuries; proverbs largely come from the "little tradition" of the overwhelming peasant majority of Chinese society.[3] 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".[13] Scarborough observed that wit, humour, and puns can be found in abundance.[14]

In terms of form, Scarborough tried to characterize ‌Su-'hua, "Common Sayings", more clearly than a metaphorical description by Alfred Lord Tennyson and by the descriptions of proverb in several contemporary dictionaries, which he stated to be inaccurate descriptions.[15] He observed that most proverbs were couplets,[16] which he divided into three major groups (with a smaller number of minor outliers[17]):

• Antithetical couplets incorporate antithesis; usually have 7 words per line, and have rules about the tones in each line and a prohibition on repetition.[16]
• Connected sentences have fewer rules about composition; but they again incorporate antithesis, a very pointed one.[18]
• Rhymes, with corresponding tones.[18]

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.[13] Sun Zhiping's 1982 definition of ‌yanyu (translated and recounted by Rosenhow) is "complete sentences, expressing a judgement or an inference, [which] may be used to validate [or to] represent [one's] own [individual] views, [whereas] chenyu, xieouyu, and suyu generally can only serve as parts of a sentence, [and are] used to give a concrete description of expression of the quality, state, degree, etc. of some objective material phenomenon".[10]

Rosenhow notes however that some sentence fragments also fall within the category of Chinese proverbs, with ellipsis 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.[19]

Numerous Asian proverbs, in particular, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean 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).[20]

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.[2] As stated earlier, they have historically been a part of a long-standing oral culture amongst the Chinese peasantry,[3] 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.[28]

One factor was the May 4th Movement not only encouraging vernacular language over Literary Chinese 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."[29] The Potato School of writing even required the use of proverbs.[30]

Another factor was the deliberate use of proverbs as a rhetorical technique by leaders such as Mao Zedong addressing primarily peasant audiences.[30] Mao encouraged others to do the same as he himself did, in his 1942 Talks on Literature and Art at the Yan'an Forum, 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.[29]

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."[31]

• Korean proverbs
• Japanese proverbs