Eating idioms: 吃醋, 吃豆腐 and 吃木瓜 explained

Mandarin uses the verb 吃 chī (to eat) for far more than food. You can eat vinegar, tofu, bitterness, a loss, a surprise and even a closed door, and none of these involve a meal. Three of them cause learners particular trouble because the literal reading is perfectly plausible at a dinner table.

This page explains 吃醋 and 吃豆腐, which are standard and common, and 吃木瓜, which has a reputation online as an idiom and turns out to be something less. A table of other well-attested 吃 expressions follows.

What does 吃醋 (chī cù) mean?

Literally: to eat, or more naturally to have, vinegar. Figuratively: to be jealous, above all in love. If your partner bristles when you talk to someone attractive, they are 吃醋.

The expression is a verb plus object, so words can be inserted between the two parts. To say whose attention is being resented, you "eat that person's vinegar": 吃他的醋 chī tā de cù. Related words keep the image going. A habitually jealous person is a 醋罈子 (醋坛子) cùtánzi, a vinegar jar, and 吃飛醋 (吃飞醋) chī fēicù is jealousy with no real cause. In Taiwan you will also hear 吃味 chīwèi for the same feeling.

Where it comes from

The explanation given in Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary is the plain one: vinegar is sour, and jealousy feels sour inside. Chinese still uses 酸 suān (sour) for envy in general.

The famous origin story is folk etymology. In it, the Tang emperor Taizong offers concubines to his chancellor Fang Xuanling, whose wife objects. The emperor gives her a choice between accepting and drinking a cup of poison. She drinks without hesitating, and the cup turns out to hold vinegar. It is a good story, told with different ministers in different versions, and there is no evidence that it produced the phrase. The dictionary's citation for 吃醋 in the jealous sense comes from the eighteenth-century novel Dream of the Red Chamber, more than a thousand years after the supposed event.

What does 吃豆腐 (chī dòufu) mean?

Literally: to eat tofu, which is what it means in any restaurant. As slang, 吃豆腐 means to take liberties with someone: unwanted touching, groping, or suggestive remarks. It is most often said of a man's behaviour towards a woman. The Ministry of Education dictionary defines the wider sense as taking advantage of someone or embarrassing them, so it can also cover teasing at another person's expense.

The victim appears as the owner of the tofu: 吃她的豆腐 chī tā de dòufu, "to eat her tofu". 別吃我豆腐 (别吃我豆腐) bié chī wǒ dòufu means "keep your hands to yourself".

Do not treat this as a cute phrase. It can be used jokingly among friends, but it also appears in news reports about harassment, and it describes behaviour that ends careers. Learn to recognise it, and use it mainly to object.

Where it comes from

Nobody can prove the origin, and the two usual accounts are both folk etymology. The expression is associated with Shanghai and the surrounding Wu-speaking region and seems to have spread into Mandarin from there.

• The tofu-shop story. Tofu was often sold by a husband-and-wife business, with the wife at the counter. Male customers supposedly came to "eat tofu" as a pretext to flirt with her. The stock figure of the 豆腐西施 dòufu Xīshī, the "tofu beauty", appears in Lu Xun's 1921 story 故鄉 (故乡) Gùxiāng.
• The funeral-meal story. In the Jiangnan region, mourners were served a simple vegetarian meal built around tofu, the 豆腐飯 (豆腐饭) dòufufàn. People who turned up only for the free food were "eating tofu", that is, taking advantage.

Either may contain some truth. Kungfucius would not bet a block of tofu on which.

Is 吃木瓜 (chī mùguā) a real idiom?

Not really. 吃木瓜 means "to eat papaya" and is not a fixed expression with a second meaning. It is absent from the Ministry of Education dictionary and from the standard lists of idioms and colloquial phrases, and Kungfucius could find no reliable source that treats it as one.

What does exist is a folk belief, widespread in Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China, that eating papaya makes breasts grow. Green papaya stewed with pork ribs and 木瓜牛奶 mùguā niúnǎi (papaya milk) are the usual prescriptions. Nutritionists quoted in Taiwanese health media say there is no evidence for the effect. Because everyone knows the belief, telling a woman 多吃木瓜 duō chī mùguā ("eat more papaya") is understood as a remark about her chest. That is an innuendo riding on shared folklore, not an idiom, and it is rude.

So if you read 她喜歡吃木瓜 (她喜欢吃木瓜) tā xǐhuan chī mùguā, it means she likes papaya. Nothing more.

Two footnotes for the nerds. In classical texts 木瓜 is a different fruit, the Chinese quince: the Classic of Poetry line 投我以木瓜，報之以瓊琚 (投我以木瓜，报之以琼琚) tóu wǒ yǐ mùguā, bào zhī yǐ qióngjū, "she threw me a quince, I repaid her with jade", was written long before papayas reached Asia from the Americas. And in modern slang 木瓜 can occasionally mean a slow-witted person, which has nothing to do with eating one.

More 吃 expressions worth knowing

These are all standard, common and safe to use.

Expression	Pinyin	Literal meaning	Real meaning
吃苦	chīkǔ	eat bitterness	to endure hardship
吃虧 (吃亏)	chīkuī	eat a loss	to lose out, to be at a disadvantage
吃香	chīxiāng	eat fragrance	to be in demand, to be popular
吃驚 (吃惊)	chījīng	eat a fright	to be startled, to be shocked
吃力	chīlì	eat strength	strenuous, to find something hard going
吃不消	chībuxiāo	cannot digest it	to be unable to stand or cope with something
吃官司	chī guānsi	eat a lawsuit	to be sued, to end up in court
吃閉門羹 (吃闭门羹)	chī bìméngēng	eat closed-door soup	to be turned away at the door, to be refused

The last one has a literary origin story of its own. A Tang-era anecdote tells of a courtesan who served a bowl of soup (羹 gēng) to callers she would not receive, so that the soup became the polite form of a shut door.

Example sentences

Traditional	Simplified	Pinyin	English
他看到女朋友跟別人聊天就吃醋。	他看到女朋友跟别人聊天就吃醋。	Tā kàndào nǚpéngyou gēn biérén liáotiān jiù chīcù.	He gets jealous whenever he sees his girlfriend chatting with someone else.
你在吃誰的醋？	你在吃谁的醋？	Nǐ zài chī shéi de cù?	Who are you jealous of?
別想吃我的豆腐。	别想吃我的豆腐。	Bié xiǎng chī wǒ de dòufu.	Don't even think about trying it on with me.
他藉著喝酒吃女同事的豆腐。	他借着喝酒吃女同事的豆腐。	Tā jièzhe hē jiǔ chī nǚ tóngshì de dòufu.	He used drinking as an excuse to take liberties with his female colleagues.
我很喜歡吃麻婆豆腐。	我很喜欢吃麻婆豆腐。	Wǒ hěn xǐhuan chī mápó dòufu.	I really like mapo tofu. (Literal, and innocent.)
學中文要能吃苦。	学中文要能吃苦。	Xué Zhōngwén yào néng chīkǔ.	To learn Chinese you have to be able to take some hardship.
老實人容易吃虧。	老实人容易吃亏。	Lǎoshi rén róngyì chīkuī.	Honest people easily lose out.
會說中文的工程師很吃香。	会说中文的工程师很吃香。	Huì shuō Zhōngwén de gōngchéngshī hěn chīxiāng.	Engineers who speak Chinese are in demand.
我去找他，結果吃了閉門羹。	我去找他，结果吃了闭门羹。	Wǒ qù zhǎo tā, jiéguǒ chīle bìméngēng.	I went to see him and was turned away at the door.
聽到這個消息，大家都很吃驚。	听到这个消息，大家都很吃惊。	Tīngdào zhège xiāoxi, dàjiā dōu hěn chījīng.	Everyone was shocked to hear the news.

The fourth sentence is, sadly, the realistic one. Business dinners are where the phrase earns its keep, as the guide to drinking culture in China explains.

Why do Chinese idioms use eating?

Partly because 吃 is one of the most flexible verbs in the language. Beyond putting food in your mouth, it extends to absorbing, taking on and suffering something. That is the sense in 吃苦, 吃虧 and 吃驚: you are on the receiving end. English does a little of this ("swallow an insult", "eat your words"), and Chinese does a great deal.

Partly it is culture. Food is the default topic of small talk, and 你吃了嗎？(你吃了吗？) Nǐ chī le ma? ("Have you eaten?") is a traditional greeting. A language that greets people with a meal will happily describe feelings as flavours.

One point of terminology. These phrases are colloquial expressions, 慣用語 (惯用语) guànyòngyǔ, and not chengyu, the four-character idioms drawn from classical literature. They are informal, flexible and at home in speech. For the Chinese habit of playing with words that sound alike, see puns and homophones.

How to use these without embarrassing yourself

• Use 吃醋 freely. It is light, common and suitable for teasing a partner or a friend.
• Treat 吃豆腐 as a word for calling out behaviour. Joking about doing it yourself rarely lands well from a learner.
• Skip the papaya remark entirely.
• Add 吃苦, 吃虧, 吃驚 and 吃香 to your flashcards first. They turn up in ordinary conversation every week.
• Watch your tones: 醋 cù is fourth tone, and the 腐 in 豆腐 is neutral. A quick review of Mandarin tones helps these sound natural.

Kungfucius's own rule is to eat the tofu on the plate and leave all other tofu alone.