Chinese idiom · 成语
邯郸匍匐
Meaning
To crawl like in Handan; to lose one’s way by copying others.
Character by character
Origin and story
FableZhuangzi (莊子), Qiu Shui (秋水), tells of a young person from Shouling who goes to learn the way people walk in Handan. He fails to acquire the local skill and also loses his former way of walking, so he can only crawl home. The story appears in a discussion warning against trying to grasp another teaching in a way that destroys one’s existing grounding.
邯郸匍匐 is an attested variant associated with the better-known 邯郸学步, focusing on the humiliating crawl at the end. It is a fable about imitation that fails and erases one’s own abilities, not an argument that learning from others is always wrong.
Sources and further reading
In everyday life
一味模仿别人的写作风格，反而丢了自己的声音，真成了邯郸匍匐。
Blindly copying others’ writing styles and losing your own voice is a case of imitation that leaves you worse off.
A less common variant of 邯郸学步; emphasizes losing one’s own abilities through failed imitation.