Chinese Proverbs for Self-improvement
The Ancient Chinese Proverb about Cunning that Inspired a Children’s Bestseller
On the Saying: “The Fox Borrows the Tiger’s Might” (Hú jiǎ hǔ wēi)
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A nice, clever idiom can always “tickle my fancy.”
As a native-born Southerner, I grew up surrounded by folksy expressions, and since becoming a professor of comparative philosophy, I’ve had the opportunity to explore idioms from other cultures, too.
I’m especially thrilled whenever I stumble upon expressions from different cultures with overlapping meanings. In those moments, I find a small sense of solidarity with the whole human race.
For instance, there are several sayings in the U.S. related to the cunning of foxes. Someone might be called “as sly as a fox,” or as deceptively dangerous as “a fox in the hen-house,” or even so shrewdly unpredictable that they are “crazy like a fox.”
It just so happens that the meaning behind these sayings also links up with a Chinese chéngyǔ — or “ready-made speech” — from the 3rd-century BCE.
Chéngyǔ are 4 to 6-character phrases derived from classic philosophical texts and great literary works — and they’re still widely popular in China, even today. I think more people need to know about these terrific sources of folk wisdom and self-expression! So, I’ve created this series — “Chinese Proverbs for Self-Improvement.”
Each post will be devoted to a single chéngyǔ — including its historical background, philosophical import, and some context for using it properly.
In this post, we’ll cover a chéngyǔ about a fox that I was reminded of when I started reading a certain children’s book to my kids.
The Curious Case of the Gruffalo
One of the perks of being a new dad is that I get the chance to reconnect with a genre of literature I’d long since forgotten, discovering new stories that didn’t exist when I was a boy.
I’ve found there are some incredibly rich (and deceptively complex!) children’s books out there…
One such case is the 1999 picture-book The Gruffalo — by Julia Donaldson. It’s a bestseller that’s won awards, inspired numerous sequels, and has been adapted into several feature length films and musicals.
It became an instant favorite with my kids, too, and was always near the top of the stack of most frequently requested bedtime stories. But… I have to admit… it took me some time to come around to liking it.
During our very first read-through, I couldn’t help but feel there was something strange and yet oddly familiar about this story. The hero is a tiny mouse — all alone in the deep, dark wood, — who encounters several creatures (a fox, an owl, and a snake) all hoping to have him for lunch/tea/a feast. In each case, he escapes by describing an imaginary friend — the titular monster — who’s so terrifying that the would-be predators are all scared away. Everything seems to have worked out, until the mouse meets a creature who matches the description of the monster he’s invented.
As I turned each page, I began to notice how the only truthful character in the entire story was the monstrous Gruffalo. The rest all use lies and deception to achieve their goals.
I wondered out loud what kind of lesson this story was teaching my kids.
But, bedtime with a pair of sleepy littles is hardly the place for literary criticism… so I finished up the story, kissed them goodnight, and tip-toed back to my room.
As I drifted off to sleep, I started wondering what moral might be found in Donaldson’s story — that’s when I remembered a Chinese folk-tale about a fox and a tiger. I whipped out my laptop and after a few minutes searching online, I found the story in a historical text from the 3rd-century BCE known as the Zhàn Guó Cè.
Well, that explained the familiar feeling… but what about that strange moral lesson?
Fortunately, there was a chéngyǔ associated with the folk-tale that I could fall back on.
The Fox Borrows the Tiger’s Might — Hú jiǎ hǔ wēi [狐假虎威]
The story of the fox and the tiger is a folk-tale recounted by a court minister to the state of Chu by the name of Jiang Yi.
Apparently worried about his royal authority, Jiang’s lord, King Xuan, had asked his ministers why the princes of the northern kingdoms were said to be completely terrified of his most trusted general, Zhao Xixu.
Here’s the folk-tale Jiang told:
Once there was a cunning fox who had been caught by a fierce tiger. Just as he was about to be eaten, the fox exclaimed, “You can’t eat me! I’ve been sent by the Lord of Nature to rule over the beasts of the forest! You wouldn’t want to anger the Lord of Nature, would you?”
The tiger didn’t believe it. But, the fox said, “Just follow me into the forest and see how the other animals react when they see me.”
As the two approached, each one of the other animals ran away in fear… not because of the fox, but because of the mighty tiger behind him. The fox acted as if the other animals were afraid of him, and the tiger — seeing the animals running in fear — was fooled.
This is how the fox borrowed the tiger’s might to save himself from being eaten.
Jiang concluded that it wasn’t general Zhao Xixu himself that the northern princes feared, but the army of 100,000 strong the king had put behind him.
Thus, the real might belonged to the king himself.
Searching for the Moral…
Although Jiang Yi told this tale to reassure a king about the power of his position, the expression hú jiǎ hǔ wēi has grown to mean something slightly different in modern usage.
Nowadays it’s used to capture a kind of workplace bullying wherein some underling or office-suck-up cunningly uses the boss’s favor as a weapon against their fellow co-workers.
In other words, the fox ain’t exactly the hero in this story!
And that squares with how we usually think of foxes in our own idioms, too… although foxes (and the people likened to them) might be wily and full of guile, they aren’t considered paragons of virtue.
So, that left me even more flummoxed about Donaldson’s story, which she confirmed in 2007 had been inspired by the Chinese tale. Were the little mouse’s lies justified because the other creatures — aside from the Gruffalo, of course — had all lied to him first? Was the story saying it was okay to deceive liars and monsters?!
After giving it WAY MORE thought than a children’s picture-book deserves, I found the answer by considering how the story must’ve looked through the eyes of my kids…
Like them, the mouse is incredibly tiny. Like them, nature hasn’t given him a way to protect himself against the dangers of the deep, dark wood.
That someone so small — and so vulnerable — could use their wits to effect self-rescue is a powerful lesson, indeed. The mouse’s deceptions at once demonstrate the power of critical thinking and the value of self-reliance.
And, those are the kinds of virtues I hope my kids develop in droves as they learn to navigate the challenges of their own lives.
So, we’ll go on reading The Gruffalo, and hopefully someday they’ll be as “cunning as a fox” and as brave as that mouse.
