Chinese Proverbs and other interesting Chinese Expressions
Some comments on the collection of proverbs
The reason why many people are totally confused by Chinese proverbs is that many sites have lists of Chinese sayings , not all of which are proverbs. They are a mix bag of proverbs, idioms, colloquialisms etc...
Since I am not a scholar of linguistic and Chinese literature (just interested in them), I don't know what exactly qualifies as a proverb. Some Chinese idioms sound and look like proverbs, but they are not proverbs by definition. There are English proverbs that translate into Chinese idioms but not Chinese proverbs, and vise-versa. E.g. the Chinese saying " The view of a frog at the bottom of a well is limited." is a proverb that is usually used as an idiom :" view of a frog at the bottom of a well". That has a similar, but not identical, counterpart in English: tunnel vision .
Below, the list of Chinese proverbs and other interesting Chinese expressions are without going through the general discussion.
Again, I must emphasis that I am neither a Chinese nor an English scholar, so please excuse me for the many spelling and grammatical mistakes I have made in my various web pages.
* Acknowledgment : Some of the translations are based on suggestions made by various contributors to the Hanying forum and Mr.Sparkler's collection of notes on translation
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