Chinese idiom · 成语
按图索骥
Meaning
To search by following a guide or known clues; also, to follow a model too rigidly.
Character by character
Origin and story
Literary analogyThe horse-search image appears in Mei Fu’s argument preserved in Han Shu (漢書), volume 67. He compares selecting people for the present by the methods of remote antiquity to consulting the horse expert Bole’s illustrations and expecting to find an outstanding horse in the market. The analogy questions whether inherited descriptions alone are adequate for judging current realities.
This passage is an argument, not a narrated adventure about someone finding the wrong animal. The idiom can criticize rigid reliance on a model, but it also has a neutral modern sense: following known clues or a guide to locate something. Context determines which meaning is intended.
Sources and further reading
In everyday life
我照着朋友发来的地址按图索骥，很快就找到了那家小店。
Following the address my friend sent, I quickly found the little shop.
This is the neutral sense of following clues, not the critical sense of inflexible thinking.