Shenzhan Liao, Astoria, New York, 2017
守株待兔 shǒu zhū dài tù @ Studio Mandarin. 🍊橘子斋
One Sunday afternoon in June 2017 I was having a typical brunch with K, a good friend of mine in a charming Upper West Side restaurant in Manhattan. Over a delicious burger and salad, we were catching up on almost everything: relationships, work/study-life balance, travel plans, etc. Somehow I started talking about the idea I have for a while to write stories of Chinese idiomatic expressions that are easy to understand cross-culturally.
“For example, ‘守株待兔’ would be a good cross-cultural idiomatic expression.” There are thousands of Chinese idiomatic expressions (成语), allegories typically formed with 4 characters sometimes drawing from historical stories, sometimes from fables. They are fun to know, and when using them properly, certainly sound more civilized and intellectual. But not all of them are so cross-culture friendly.
“What is ‘守株待兔’?” K asked. K has studied Chinese for over 15 years, lived in Beijing for a significant period of time, and worked at a consulting firm serving Chinese clients for 2 years. With dark blonde hair and grey eyes, K always surprises anyone (particularly Chinese) with her almost impeccable Mandarin Chinese. She repeated the exact word in Chinese, but apparently didn’t know the meaning, even with her impressive ability mastering Chinese.
“ ‘守’ means ‘stand next to’ or ‘guard’ ; ‘株’ means a stump; ‘待’ means ‘wait for’; ‘兔’ is 兔, a rabbit. If you put them together it literally means ‘standing next to a stump waiting for a rabbit’. And as an allegory it is of course not just about the literal meaning. So the story is as below:
One day a farmer sees a rabbit running into a stump in his rice field with such great speed that it breaks its neck and instantly dies. Since then he waits next to the stump all day instead of farming, with the hope that rabbits will keep running into it and die for him to pick up without hard labor. After a while (without farming) with his crops dying and no more rabbits showing up, the farmer subsequently becomes a joke in the kingdom.
So by now, it’s fairly clear that the real meaning, while can have different readings, is to warn people don’t just wait for good things to happen even sometimes luck strikes. ”
“Ah, just like dating.” K immediately replied, and appropriately applied, “ We need to take actions instead of waiting for the right one to show up. 我们不能 ‘守株待兔’. (We can’t wait next to the stump for the rabbit.)”
“Indeed, we can’t ‘守株待兔’”. I laughed.
BTW, for the rest of the brunch, we certainly DIDN’T imagine guys like desperate aimless rabbits breaking their necks at a stump. And that’s the reason we both are still single! # Sarcasm
Astoria, New York