5 Chinese Sayings the Will Impress Native Speakers

learn Chinese now I'm Ben Hedges I have a degree in modern and classical Chinese from the University of London I've used Chinese language throughout my career I was rated the number three internet celebrity in Taiwan for the year 2014 by search volume and on this channel I teach Chinese and share my love of Chinese culture with the world now everyone who is learning some Chinese wants to sound like a native people love learning chongu or four character sayings but some sometimes it's hard to know where to use them but in this video I am going to give you five Chinese set phrases that have an exact English equivalent which makes it really easy to know when to use them and thus you'll be able to easily impress all your Chinese friends now number one now refers to the great General and warlord in the Three Kingdoms period or sang which lasted from 220 to 280 ad so the whole phrase speak of and arrives is what you say when you were just talking about someone and then they suddenly show up so what English phrase is this equivalent to yes speak of the devil so whenever you would say speak of the devil in English you can just say and Chinese people will love you for it and think you're really fluent number two okay so this one translates as the old man near the frontier loses his horse how do you know it's not a blessing so there's this whole story about how this old guy's horse ran across the frontier and he thought that he' lost it but then it ran back leading a load of fine horses that it found out on the frontier so what he thought was going to be a bad thing actually turns out to be good and the story goes on with his son riding one of those fine horses and then he falls off and he gets injured and they thought that was bad but then because of that he was not drafted into the army when all the other young men in the village were and he survived when all the others died Etc so basically when something you thought was bad turns out to have some advantages for you you can use this saying it's the Chinese equivalent of a blessing in disguise now you just say the first four characters normally and that does the job okay s if you want to add the second for you can y fa literally how no not good fortune but it's not really required and usually saying the first four is more common number three this literally means enter the village follow the Customs so I've had people say this to me in Taiwan years ago when they heard me have a slight cough like and they immediately pull out a mask and think that I should wear it okay and they were like enter the village follow the Customs this was before covid when westerners really weren't used to wearing masks and I think you already know what English saying this one is equivalent of When in Rome do as the Romans do like eating your dinner and then vomit it out so you can eat another dinner which apparently wasn't even true anyway okay the vomitorium the special room for vomiting was didn't even mean that it's apparently something made up by later writers but anyway anytime that you decide to do something that you wouldn't normally do just because you are following the customs in a certain region and you'd say when in Rome in English you can say number four this is another one that is very similar to its English equivalent so one Arrow Two Eagles and it comes from a story about a guy shooting one arrow and killing two Eagles okay kind of obvious well this is incredibly similar to the English phrase killing two birds with one stone basically any time you accomplish two things in one action and you'd say killing two birds with one stone in English you can say one Arrow Two Eagles number five this means what Heroes see is the same or the way Heroes see things is the same so Yong is heroen what they see and means pretty similar okay pretty much the same before the verb Tong or same means like somewhat or pretty so I'm translating this as pretty similar okay what Heroes see is pretty much similar or pretty much the same or the way Heroes see things is the same and this is the Chinese version of the English phrase great minds think alike so I hope that's been interesting for you guys and I want to repeat all five just one more time so we have speak of the devil a blessing in disguise remember you don't need to add the second four characters you can just say the first four When in Rome do as the Romans do killing two birds with one stone great minds think alike let me know if you think of any more Chinese phrases that have exact English equivalent in the comments below if you're into tea and you want to check out a tyese high mountain tea that I personally recommend do click the link in the description down below please subscribe to the channel if you're new we'll see you next time bye-bye