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Once you were tiny; look how grown you are — father's rice, mother's clothes, teacher's pains: think how to be worth those hoping years.
nowadays; in this day and age
International Workers’ Day; May Day
Children’s Day
once upon a time
A day's road is less than a hand-span of water — the shortest water crossing outdelays the longest land march.
first day of school
Price-delusional — asking or expecting a price wildly detached from reality, as if high on the number itself; born in the property market and now applied to any overpriced listing.
to be intensely bored
Bonds cut and kin estranged, all for money — the one solvent that dissolves blood.
Look up at the lashings of the roof — as many knots as there are, that many times I miss my grandparents.
Words have long wings — speech flies farther than its speaker ever travels.
Words and deeds at odds — professing one thing and practicing another.
Words outrunning the truth — the account bigger than the fact.
Few words, much knowing — the reticent mind is the full one.
Star-words and gem-speech — language distilled until it belongs in the anthologies.
Speak so it lands — one sentence discloses the gentleman or the knave; aim every word.
Eccentric with style — flamboyance carried off on personality alone.
overhead locker
Barring the rivers and banning the markets — cutting off the flow of goods between regions.
Five pips seize the deal — the tam cúc hand that wins the right to lead; grabbing first call.
Fish-eyes mixed among pearls — fakes shelved with the genuine, daring the eye to sort them.
Fish and water in one band — a fellowship as close as the element to what swims in it.
Close to the English saying: “Birds of a feather flock together.”.
The moneyed scorn the empty-handed — respect priced strictly in cash.
A stranger with decency, treat as kin; kin without decency, let them go — conduct, not blood, draws the family line.
A two-faced person — sweet to your face, different behind your back; the standard label for double-dealing.
The wise age quickly — thought is expensive tissue.
every man for himself
People are the gold; goods are the debt of kindness — value the maker over the made.
People make the wealth — hands, not vaults, are the mint.
The louse-picker — someone withdrawn from worldly affairs, absorbed in their own small business.
The busybody — "many-story person": collects, retells, and embroiders everyone's business; every neighborhood has one.
People come in five and seven ranks, goods in three and seven kinds — variety is the census of the world.
A living person is a pile of gold — no asset compares with being alive.
People are the flowers of the earth — humanity as the soil's finest bloom.
Others transplant rice for wages; I transplant watching every quarter — sky, earth, cloud, rain, sun, day, night — praying for firm feet and soft stone, calm heaven and quiet sea — the farmer's whole anxiety in one verse.
Others travel in pairs and return in pairs; I go single and come back alone — solitude in one couplet.
People look their best in silk — presentation flatters whoever wears it.
Why did we ever have to meet — a hundred years on, who knows if the path held fate or not.
"the young perish and the old linger"; an elderly person has/had to suffer the anguish of watching their young loved one die, because they think it should be the other way around
The one who came after — loving someone who loved before you; second in the door, whole in the heart.
People endure, goods are on loan — property is the guest, we are the household.
A person is a flower — open at morning, gone by dark, blooming only to fade — mortality in one blossom.
secondhand embarrassment
Holding the soap-nut and calling it sweet — swallowing bitterness with a straight face.
Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.
Holding the bitter, swallowing the acrid — grievance eaten daily and in silence.
Nodding and drifting — sluggish, decision never quite arriving.
Empty as a pagoda — silence with room to echo.
Gazing at the naked chicken — joking euphemism for having died: the boiled offering hen stares back from the altar.
Uncut jade is no vessel; untaught people know no principle — polish makes the gem and the person.
Fine jade is never hawked about — true worth, like true virtue, needs no street-crier.
Stone and jade burn together — war's fire checks no credentials; the good perish mixed with the bad.
A sprig of greens, an inch of soil — even the smallest sustenance obliges the eater to its giver.
You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.
Sweet as sugar — sweetness beyond argument.
Idle and sad, I remember my mother of old — chewing rice soft for me, her tongue sorting out the fish bones — tenderness recalled in its smallest act.
Sitting under the fig with mouth open, waiting for the drop — providence expected to do the chewing too.
Sitting in the shade, eating from a gold bowl — reward without a bead of sweat.