This proverb literally means "people head towards the top, water runs towards the bottom." The pronunciation is "ren wang gao chu zou, shui wang di chu liu."
First, I want to digress a bit, and say that it is important to note that literal translations do not always sound as good as the original saying, not to mention the fact that the literal translation does not always capture the original intended meaning. Not to worry...this blog exists to fill in the gaps for the imperfect literal translations.
The way I see it, this proverb attempts to observe a general fact about professional careers. In the natural course of things, water runs in conformity to gravity, it runs from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain, it runs from the faucet into the bottom of the sink. Likewise, in the natural course of things, people would want, or more strongly, are meant to climb the career ladder to top of their profession.
The purpose of the proverb, I think, is to remind people who are at the bottom of the career ladder or have not yet found jobs that better days are ahead, since in the natural course of things, people always advance.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Purpose of this Blog
Hello readers,
Chinese proverbs teach lessons about human behavior and social order. However, these lessons do not come in 500 page books or 3-hour lectures, but in small packages of 10 Chinese characters or less. Moreover, with over 5000 years of Chinese civilizations, one may be sure that these proverbs are time tested if they are passed down to our generation and end up in this blog!
A situation, no matter how complex, may be described by one Chinese proverb. For example, let's say you to want to be the CEO of a multinational company and someday own property by the beach, yet you are not doing anything professionally or academically to reach that goal. The Chinese proverb appropriate for this scenario is "眼高手底" or "yan gao shou di." This proverb literally means "eyes high hands low." In other words, you are setting your sights high but you are not doing anything to reach that goal, so what's the point? The purpose of this proverb is to induce change in you: either you start doing something towards your goal now or set another goal that is more reachable for you.
This blog will discuss Chinese proverbs one post at a time. Why should you be interested? Chinese proverbs allow you to:
Chinese proverbs teach lessons about human behavior and social order. However, these lessons do not come in 500 page books or 3-hour lectures, but in small packages of 10 Chinese characters or less. Moreover, with over 5000 years of Chinese civilizations, one may be sure that these proverbs are time tested if they are passed down to our generation and end up in this blog!
A situation, no matter how complex, may be described by one Chinese proverb. For example, let's say you to want to be the CEO of a multinational company and someday own property by the beach, yet you are not doing anything professionally or academically to reach that goal. The Chinese proverb appropriate for this scenario is "眼高手底" or "yan gao shou di." This proverb literally means "eyes high hands low." In other words, you are setting your sights high but you are not doing anything to reach that goal, so what's the point? The purpose of this proverb is to induce change in you: either you start doing something towards your goal now or set another goal that is more reachable for you.
This blog will discuss Chinese proverbs one post at a time. Why should you be interested? Chinese proverbs allow you to:
- Learn interesting lessons about life in general
- Apply these lessons in daily life so that you may become a better person
- Learn about Chinese culture and philosophy
- Show off to your friends, so that you appear smart when you suddenly smoothly blurt out a proverb you learned from this blog to apply to a situation.
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