theo đít ngựa
Trailing the horse's rear — following power at the tail end.
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Where will you be? Anywhere Hà Nội & the NorthHuế / Đà Nẵng & the CenterSài Gòn & the SouthOnline slang Bắc ↔ Nam words
Trailing the horse's rear — following power at the tail end.
Trailing the embers to eat the ash — hangers-on living off the sparks of others' fires.
Matching nerve and measuring strength — a contest fought to the last fiber.
A painting inside the poem — verse so visual it hangs like a scroll.
A poem's feeling, a painting's intent — beauty composed in two arts at once.
A seat-warming idol — installed like a shrine figure, feeding on offerings, doing nothing.
Grant the favor, seek no repayment — kindness invoiced is kindness sold.
to pass or fail an exam
A thousand changes, ten thousand transformations — flux that outruns every forecast.
Heaven harbors no gang of traitors — the crooked circle is always foreclosed from above.
Heaven births no one without a portion — existence ships with provisions.
How high heaven is, how thick the earth — the scale of things the arrogant have never measured.
A thousand truths, ten thousand certainties — verified beyond any quibble.
Heaven's machinery must not be shown — the decisive secret stays sealed.
A match fixed by heaven beforehand — love decreed before the lovers ever met.
Till heaven runs wild and earth grows old — a term measured against the universe's own aging.
multiform; manifold; protean
Without equal under heaven — one of one.
A thousand crimsons, ten thousand purples — blossom season at full riot.
The warp of heaven, the rightness of earth — truths as fixed as the compass points.
A thousand charms, a hundred graces — beauty with its full arsenal.
A thousand marvels, ten thousand shapes — variety past cataloguing.
inescapable net
The thousand-mile journey starts under your feet — begin, and the distance is already shrinking.
What heaven's law cannot pardon — wickedness past the last court of appeal.
by hook or by crook; by every possible means
Beyond this sky, another sky — however high you stand, a higher stands past it.
A thousand words, ten thousand sayings — everything there is to say, said.
by hook or by crook; by every possible means
A thousand troops, ten thousand horses — force in its grandest census.
Heaven births no one without a portion, earth grows no grass without a root — provision is issued with existence.
Heaven makes each generation's people equal to that generation's work — every age is issued its own sufficient hands.
A thousand mountains, ten thousand rivers — the full toll of a long, hard road.
Heaven's disasters and enemies' havoc — calamity from sky and foe alike.
A thousand autumns, ten thousand years — permanence wished at imperial scale.
Divine Covenant of the Cao Dai religion (rendered into English as 'God and Humanity [for] Love and Justice.')
Long as heaven, lasting as earth — devotion on a geological warranty.
A thousand pains, ten thousand hardships — suffering itemized to the last entry.
A thousand thoughts, ten thousand musings — the mind circling without landing.
once in a blue moon; once in a thousand years
The Son of Heaven makes no idle remark — from the throne, every syllable is law or must not be spoken.
No two suns in the sky, no two kings in a realm — authority is singular or it is war.
Heaven's net is hard to flee — the sky's mesh is loose, and nothing slips it.
A thousand thanks, ten thousand gratitudes — appreciation at full ceremony.
Heaven's justice repays before your eyes — the verdict arrives in this life, not forwarded to the next.
Heaven's way blesses the good and afflicts the excessive — the sky keeps one ledger for everyone.
Heaven and earth are vast, yet someone still complains — no weather suits every field.
An iron face without favor — incorruptibly impartial, whatever it costs.
Young and untried by affairs — the greenness of years not yet weathered.
full of hardship
Heaven hears through the people's ears — the popular voice is the celestial audit.
A good life earns a good end — the peaceful deathbed is built over decades.
Good and evil repay like the shadow trailing the form — recompense walks exactly your gait, one step behind.
New Year’s card
Southern "for real?" — the reflex double-check when news sounds too good, too bad, or too weird to be true.
Losses single and double — hurt on every side of the deal.
Praise for someone scarily clever: "only the feather fan short of Zhuge Liang" — one prop away from the legendary strategist himself.
Lose ten thousand to heaven before one hair to a friend — defeat by fate is bearable; by a peer, never.
Trailing the master by ten thousand stings less than trailing a friend by a hair — envy runs on proximity: we measure ourselves against peers, not paragons.
The boat may move; the old wharf never does — affections change vessels, not their moorings.