Guide

How to use chengyu in a Chinese essay

One chengyu in the right place tells the reader you know the language well. Five of them stacked into one paragraph tell the reader you memorized a list the night before. That holds for a class essay and for the writing section of HSK 5 or 6.

Start with what you want to say

Don't pick an idiom first and then build a sentence around it. Write the point you want to make in plain Chinese, then ask whether an idiom says it shorter or better. If none fits, leave it plain. Nobody marks you down for a clear sentence.

Most essay topics in textbooks and exams circle the same ideas: studying, work, mistakes, change, and whether some habit is good or bad. These idioms from the Daily Chengyu library cover a lot of that ground. Each one links to a page with the origin story and an example sentence.

Where the idiom goes in the sentence

A chengyu usually does one of a few jobs. Learning these patterns helps more than learning extra idioms.

It can sum up what you just described. Put the idiom at the end, after 真是 or 也算是:

骑车去上班，既省车费又能锻炼身体，真是一举两得。

Cycling to work saves fares and gets you some exercise. That's two gains from one move (一举两得).

It can be the thing someone should or shouldn't do, after 不能, 不要, or 不想:

找工作不能守株待兔，还是要主动联系公司。

When you're looking for work, you can't just wait for luck (守株待兔). You have to contact companies yourself.

It can stand alone as a short clause, almost like a proverb dropped into the middle of your reasoning:

每天只练十分钟也别放弃，水滴石穿，慢慢就能看到进步。

Don't give up even if you only practice ten minutes a day. Dripping water wears through stone (水滴石穿), and you'll see progress over time.

Some idioms work as a description of a subject, the way an adjective would:

网络上的新骗局层出不穷，我们要提高警惕。

New online scams keep appearing (层出不穷), so we need to stay alert.

All four of these sentences come from the example sections of the idiom pages on this site, where you can also hear them read aloud.

A short example paragraph

The paragraph below was written for this page on a common topic, learning a foreign language. It has four sentences and three idioms, and no sentence has more than one.

学外语没有捷径。很多人一开始热情很高，过了几个月就半途而废。其实每天学一点就够了，水滴石穿，时间长了自然会进步。如果总想一个月就说得很流利，给自己太大的压力，反而是拔苗助长。

There's no shortcut to learning a foreign language. A lot of people start out excited and give up a few months later (半途而废). Studying a little every day is enough. Dripping water wears through stone (水滴石穿), and with time you improve. If you expect to be fluent in a month and put that much pressure on yourself, you're pulling up the seedlings to help them grow (拔苗助长).

Notice that each idiom has a plain sentence next to it doing the explaining. The idiom names the idea, and the sentences around it give the reader the facts.

Mistakes that cost marks

The most common one is using too many. Two or three in a short essay is plenty. If every sentence has one, the reader stops noticing them, and any one you get slightly wrong stands out more.

The second is getting the tone wrong. Many idioms carry a judgment. 守株待兔 is almost always a criticism, so you can't use it to describe someone patiently waiting for a good chance. 自相矛盾 means two claims that can't both be true, which is different from someone changing their mind.

The third is mixing up idioms that look alike. 画龙点睛 praises a final detail that brings a piece of work to life. 画蛇添足 criticizes an extra detail that spoils it. Both start with 画 and both are about adding something at the end, but they mean opposite things.

The fourth is a wrong character. A chengyu is a fixed set of four characters, and a reader who knows it will spot a wrong one right away. When you type in pinyin, check the characters the input method picked. Some idioms also have an older written form. 拔苗助长 is the everyday form, while 揠苗助长 keeps the character 揠 from the original passage in Mencius. Either is correct, so pick one and use it the same way every time.

How to learn them for writing

For each idiom you want to use, learn one full example sentence along with the meaning. The sentence shows you which words usually come before and after it, which a dictionary definition won't. Then write your own sentence about something in your life and check it against the usage note on the idiom's page.

Review them on a schedule. An idiom you studied once won't come to mind in the middle of a timed essay. 温故知新, reviewing the old to understand something new, is good advice here too.

Learn one a day

The Daily Chengyu app for iPhone shows one idiom each day with its pinyin, meaning, and a character-by-character breakdown.

Get Daily Chengyu on the App Store

For a themed list to browse, see Chinese idioms about animals.