Chengyu (成语)

My friend Chunyan (春燕, which, if I remember correctly, means "Spring Swallow") has recently started a Chinese class. Séverine and I are both taking it, along with Chunyan's supervisor (she's in Computer Science) and a few other people she knows through her department.

I attended for the first time on Thursday evening, having missed the first session the previous week because I was in Paris. Chunyan's supervisor is a total beginner, but everyone else in the class probably knows even more Mandarin than Séverine and I do.

Chunyan is trying to do some different things from the usual basic dialogues so that the rest of us can learn something without leaving her supervisor in the dust. One of the things she's doing is Chengyu (成语), or Chinese proverbs. Each is typically four characters long. Our first one is 拔苗助长, pronounced "bá miáo zhù zhǎng". Translated literally, it means "pull up baby plant help grow up", as in attempting to get your plants to grow faster by pulling them up a tiny bit out of the ground so they look bigger. The moral we were given in English is "too much zeal spoils all".