Chinese puns & homophones explained

Mandarin has only about 400 different syllables, or roughly 1,300 once the tones are counted, and many thousands of characters to share them. The result is a language in which almost every word sounds like some other word. Chinese culture has turned this into a system: lucky foods, unlucky gifts, decorations, festival customs and internet slang all run on sound-alikes, called 諧音 (谐音) xiéyīn.

This page has two parts. First the puns you will actually meet, with the customs they explain. Then a set of very common four-character idioms, 成語 (成语) chéngyǔ, each with the short story behind it, because a good half of Chinese wit is knowing the story.

Why Chinese has so many puns

In English a pun is a joke. In Chinese it is closer to a habit of thought. If a thing sounds like good fortune, having it around is a quiet way of wishing for good fortune, and if it sounds like death, a polite person keeps it out of sight.

Puns do not need a perfect match. Many ignore the tone, as with 四 sì and 死 sǐ, and some only rhyme. Some work better in Cantonese or Taiwanese Hokkien than in Mandarin, which is why customs differ from region to region.

Lucky puns: fish, upside-down fortune and apples

What you see or hear	Sounds like	Meaning
福倒了 fú dào le, "the 福 is upside down"	福到了 fú dào le	"Good fortune has arrived". This is why the character 福 is hung upside down on doors at Lunar New Year
魚 (鱼) yú, fish	餘 (余) yú, surplus	年年有餘 (年年有余) niánnián yǒu yú, "a surplus every year". A whole fish is served at the New Year dinner, and in many families part of it is left uneaten
年糕 niángāo, New Year rice cake	年高 nián gāo, "year high"	年年高升 niánnián gāoshēng, "rising higher every year"
蘋果 (苹果) píngguǒ, apple	平安 píng'ān, peace, safety	Christmas Eve is 平安夜 Píng'ān Yè, "peaceful night", so in mainland China apples are given on 24 December
蝙蝠 biānfú, bat	福 fú, good fortune	Bats are a lucky motif on porcelain, furniture and textiles
棗 (枣) zǎo, 花生 huāshēng, 桂圓 (桂圆) guìyuán, 蓮子 (莲子) liánzǐ: dates, peanuts, longans, lotus seeds	早生貴子 (早生贵子) zǎo shēng guìzǐ	"May you soon have a precious child". The four foods are placed on the wedding bed
鳳梨 (凤梨) fènglí, pineapple, in Taiwanese Hokkien ông-lâi	旺來 (旺来), "prosperity comes"	Pineapples and pineapple decorations in Taiwanese shops and temples

Unlucky puns: gifts to avoid

What	Sounds like	Consequence
送鐘 (送钟) sòng zhōng, to give a clock	送終 (送终) sòngzhōng, to see a dying relative off	Do not give clocks as presents
分梨 fēn lí, to share a pear	分離 (分离) fēnlí, to separate	Couples and friends do not cut a pear in half to share
傘 (伞) sǎn, umbrella	散 sàn, to break up, to scatter	An umbrella is a doubtful gift for a partner or friend
四 sì, four	死 sǐ, death	See below

More gift rules, including the right and wrong amounts of money, are on the page about red envelopes.

Why is 4 unlucky and 8 lucky?

Four and death differ only by tone in Mandarin, and the match is just as close in Cantonese, Japanese and Korean, which borrowed both words. Many buildings therefore have no fourth floor, and often no 14th or 24th either. Hospitals are especially careful.

Eight, 八 bā, resembles 發 (发) fā, as in 發財 (发财) fācái, to get rich. The rhyme is closer in Cantonese, where the fashion started. Phone numbers and car plates full of eights sell at a premium, and the Beijing Olympics opened on 8 August 2008 at eight in the evening.

Number	Pinyin	Sounds like	Meaning
4	sì	死 sǐ	death
6	liù	流 liú, to flow	things going smoothly, as in 六六大順 (六六大顺) liù liù dà shùn
8	bā	發 (发) fā	prosperity
9	jiǔ	久 jiǔ	long-lasting
520	wǔ èr líng	我愛你 (我爱你) wǒ ài nǐ	"I love you", which made 20 May an unofficial Valentine's Day
1314	yī sān yī sì	一生一世 yìshēng yíshì	"for a whole lifetime"

Puns as jokes and as cover

The same mechanism drives humour. A 歇後語 (歇后语) xiēhòuyǔ is a two-part saying where the speaker gives the first half and lets the listener supply the punchline. A classic: 外甥打燈籠 (外甥打灯笼) wàisheng dǎ dēnglong, "the nephew carries a lantern". He is lighting the way for his uncle, 照舅 zhào jiù, which sounds like 照舊 (照旧) zhàojiù, "same as before". So the answer to "how are things?" can be a nephew with a lantern.

Online, puns help words get past filters. The best-known example is 河蟹 héxiè, river crab, standing in for 和諧 (和谐) héxié, "harmony", the official word that became slang for censorship. A deleted post has been "river-crabbed".

Common chéngyǔ and the stories behind them

Chéngyǔ are fixed expressions, usually of four characters, and many are the punchline of an old fable. Without the story they make little sense: "draw snake add feet" is not self-explanatory. These eight are among the most common, and every schoolchild in the Chinese-speaking world knows the stories.

Chéngyǔ	Pinyin	Literal meaning	Used to mean	Classical source
畫蛇添足 (画蛇添足)	huà shé tiān zú	draw a snake and add feet	to spoil something by overdoing it	《戰國策》 Zhànguó Cè
守株待兔	shǒu zhū dài tù	guard the tree stump, wait for rabbits	to wait for luck instead of working	《韓非子》 Hánfēizǐ
對牛彈琴 (对牛弹琴)	duì niú tán qín	play the zither to a cow	to address the wrong audience	《牟子理惑論》 Móuzǐ Lǐhuò Lùn
井底之蛙	jǐng dǐ zhī wā	the frog at the bottom of the well	a person with a narrow view of the world	《莊子》 Zhuāngzǐ
塞翁失馬 (塞翁失马)	sài wēng shī mǎ	the old man at the frontier loses his horse	a setback may be a blessing in disguise	《淮南子》 Huáinánzǐ
自相矛盾	zì xiāng máo dùn	one's own spear against one's own shield	to contradict oneself	《韓非子》 Hánfēizǐ
亡羊補牢 (亡羊补牢)	wáng yáng bǔ láo	mend the pen after a sheep is lost	better late than never: fix it before more is lost	《戰國策》 Zhànguó Cè
掩耳盜鈴 (掩耳盗铃)	yǎn ěr dào líng	cover one's ears to steal a bell	to fool only oneself	《呂氏春秋》 Lǚshì Chūnqiū

畫蛇添足. In the state of Chu, some retainers were given a single jug of wine, enough for one. They agreed that whoever first finished drawing a snake on the ground would drink it. One man finished early, picked up the jug and, feeling pleased with himself, added feet to his snake. Another finished, took the jug away and said: snakes have no feet. The story is in the Strategies of the Warring States, in the chapters on the state of Qi.

守株待兔. A farmer in the state of Song saw a rabbit run into a tree stump in his field and break its neck. He put down his plough and sat by the stump, waiting for the next one. No rabbit came, his field went to weeds and all of Song laughed at him. Han Feizi tells it in the chapter "Five Vermin" to mock rulers who govern the present with the methods of the past.

對牛彈琴. The musician Gongming Yi played an elegant piece on the zither for a cow, which went on grazing. When he imitated the buzzing of flies and the cry of a calf, the cow pricked up its ears. The story appears in the Mouzi Lihuolun, an early Chinese Buddhist text, whose author uses it to explain why he quotes Confucian classics to Confucians. The fault, in the original, lies with the player's choice of tune. Today the phrase usually blames the cow.

井底之蛙. In the "Autumn Floods" chapter of the Zhuangzi, a frog living in a broken-down well boasts to a turtle from the Eastern Sea about the comforts of home. The turtle tries to step in, gets stuck, and then describes the sea: floods do not raise it and droughts do not lower it. The frog is left speechless.

塞翁失馬. An old man living near the northern frontier lost his horse, which ran off into nomad territory. The neighbours were sorry, and he said: who knows that this is not good luck? The horse came back with a fine nomad horse. The neighbours congratulated him, and he said: who knows that this is not bad luck? His son rode the new horse, fell and broke his leg. A year later the nomads invaded, most of the young men of the frontier died in the fighting, and the lame son survived. The story is from the Huainanzi, and the idiom is often completed with 焉知非福 yān zhī fēi fú, "how do you know it is not a blessing?"

自相矛盾. A man from Chu was selling spears and shields. "My shields are so strong that nothing can pierce them", he announced, and then: "My spears are so sharp that they pierce anything." Someone asked what would happen if his spear met his shield. He had no answer. The story is in the Han Feizi, and it gave modern Chinese its ordinary word for contradiction: 矛盾 máodùn, "spear-shield".

亡羊補牢. In the Strategies of the Warring States, the minister Zhuang Xin warns King Xiang of Chu about his careless rule and is ignored. After Chu suffers a serious defeat, the king calls him back and asks whether anything can still be done. Zhuang Xin quotes a saying: it is not too late to call the dog when you have seen the rabbit, and not too late to mend the pen when a sheep has been lost. The tale of a shepherd and a wolf that children learn is a later illustration of this line.

掩耳盜鈴. When the Fan family of Jin fell, a man tried to steal their bell. It was too heavy to carry, so he took a hammer to break it up. The bell rang out, and the thief, afraid that others would hear, quickly covered his own ears. In the original in Master Lü's Spring and Autumn Annals the object is a large bell, 鐘 (钟) zhōng. Later usage shrank it to a small bell, 鈴 (铃) líng.

What to do next

1. Learn the eight chéngyǔ above with their stories, not as vocabulary. A story sticks where four loose characters do not.
2. Notice the sound-alikes around you at the next Lunar New Year: the upside-down 福, the fish, the rice cake.
3. Check a gift against the unlucky list before you wrap it.
4. Train your ear for tones, since a pun is only funny if you can hear what it is almost saying.

More idioms are collected under chéngyǔ, and the food-based ones under Chinese eating idioms.