Four-character wisdom
In my last post, I mentioned in passing some Japanese aphorisms which are worthy of more than a moment’s reflection. Closer to home ground, for people who speak Chinese, we take for granted the abundant formulaic expressions used in the Chinese language. The ancient Chinese are of course masters in pithy sayings which are pregnant with meaning and wisdom. In particular, the four-character idioms, chenyu (成语) are compact embodiments of centuries of human experience available to every Chinese speaker at…