Lost in translation? These proverbs never were | Pt. 2

In the first installment of the series, we explored four Chinese idioms and their global parallels – on uncertainty, excess, cooperation and patience. In this one, we dive into three more – on preparedness, course-correction and the power of persistence.

The stories and parables behind them get richer. So do the parallels. 

1. On preparedness: 居安思危 (Ju an si wei) – In safety, think of danger

There is a historical episode behind this idiom, from the Zuozhuan (Zuo Tradition), China's oldest surviving narrative history, compiled around the 4th century BC.

In the state of Jin, around 560 BC, Duke Dao, who had come to power at 14 after a court coup, had spent years stabilizing his state with the help of his chief minister, Wei Jiang. Together they had managed to pacify the Rong and Di tribes on Jin's northern and western borders, and peace had finally settled over the region. In gratitude, Duke Dao sent Wei Jiang a gift of musical instruments as a mark of his royal favor.

Wei Jiang, however, refused them.

In his reply, recorded in the Zuo Zhuan, he explained that the peace Jin now enjoyed was precisely the moment of greatest danger. When a state relaxes because things are going well, it stops doing the things that made things go well. It is in times of safety, he told the duke, that a ruler must think of danger.

So, the idiom "in safety, think of danger" became a cornerstone of Chinese strategic and political thinking. It does not predict catastrophe, nor is it about paranoia. It simply observes that the time to strengthen a wall is before the storm, not during.

The Romans, on the other end of the continent, came up with "Si vis pacem, para bellum," meaning "if you want peace, prepare for war," attributed to the military writer Vegetius in the 4th century AD. While the framing for the Roman idiom is martial, the underlying logic is almost identical.

A Swahili proverb adds a different angle to the same idea: "The axe forgets, but the tree remembers." What seems like a state of peace to the powerful is often a state of accumulated memory to the vulnerable. Preparedness, here, is not just strategic – it is essential.

The English equivalent is more domestic: "Don't wait until you're thirsty to dig a well." The image scales down from empires and axes to a single thirsty person and a well that should have been dug last season.

Same lesson, different stakes, but perhaps that's exactly the point. Whether you are a ruler, a soldier or a farmer, the logic of preparation does not change.

The theme of preparedness also echoes through one of the most beloved fables in Russian and Armenian literary culture, the story of the dragonfly and the ant. The dragonfly spends the summer singing and dancing, while the ant quietly works hard all summer, storing food for winter. When the cold arrives, the dragonfly comes begging for shelter and food and is turned away. The moral is the inverse of Wei Jiang's counsel, but it lands in the same place: comfort is not a reason to stop preparing; it is actually the best time to do so.

The origin of this fable, though, is worth tracing. The Russian version most people know, Стрекоза и Муравей, was written by Ivan Krylov in 1808, and it is Krylov who swapped the original grasshopper for a dragonfly. But Krylov adapted it from the French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine, who in turn drew on Aesop's original Greek fable, The Ant and the Grasshopper, written back in the 6th century BC.

2. On course-correction: 亡羊补牢 (Wang yang bu lao) – Mending the pen after the sheep is lost

This story comes from the Strategies of the Warring States (Zhanguo Ce), c. 475–221 BC, a collection of political writings and anecdotes from the era of competing kingdoms that shaped much of classical Chinese thought. This brief, simple tale has lasted two and a half thousand years.

A farmer has a pen for his sheep. One morning, he finds a gap in the fence and a sheep missing. His neighbors tell him the sheep is gone, so fixing the fence now is pointless.

The farmer fixes the fence anyway and loses no more sheep.

The story seems obvious – of course, you should fix the fence – until you notice how often, in practice, we don't. There is a particular human tendency, after a loss, to treat the moment of failure as proof that the effort was always hopeless, a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. The pen is broken and the sheep is gone; why bother now? This idiom quietly rebukes that logic.

It's not too late. It's almost never too late. The sheep that remain are the point.

The Persian tradition offers a parallel that, in its English translation, has become one of the most widely shared proverbs of the modern internet: "The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago; the second best time is now." The framing is gentler than the Chinese, but it teaches the same thing.

Regret about the past is only useful if it urges action in the present.

Russian adds texture with "дорога ложка к обеду" – a spoon is valuable at lunchtime. What might seem redundant or belated in one context is precisely right in another.

English simply has "better late than never." This phrase traces back to the Roman historian Titus Livy, who wrote "potiusque sero quam numquam," meaning preferably late than never, in his History of Rome around 27 BC.

Geoffrey Chaucer used a version of it in his Canterbury Tales in the late 14th century, but his line, "bet than never is late," is worded differently enough that it reads more like an independent echo of the same Latin source. Scholars aren't certain Chaucer was specifically borrowing from Livy; he may have simply encountered the idea through the broader medieval Latin tradition, which was saturated with classical phrases. However, we can argue that Chaucer gave it an early appearance in English.

From English and French, it then gradually moved into the broader European linguistic tradition, including Russian "лучше поздно, чем никогда" and Armenian "լավ է ուշ, քան երբեք."

3. On persistence: 水滴石穿 (Shui di shi chuan) – Water drops pierce the stone

This one is not a parable but an observation so precise and universal that it was made independently on opposite ends of the world and captured in surprisingly similar language.

The Chinese phrase appears around the 2nd century BC in historical texts from the Han Dynasty (206 BC to AD 220). A drop of water is nothing against a stone. But water is patient, and it returns, again and again, making the stone yield over time.

Latin says the same thing, almost word for word: "Gutta cavat lapidem" – the drop hollows the stone. This phrase appears in the writings of Ovid, the Roman poet, also writing around the 1st century BC, entirely independent of its Chinese counterpart. It's still amazing how two writers, two languages and civilizations with no known contact at that time watched the water and reached for the same words.

It is one of the more quietly astonishing coincidences in the history of human thought.

West African oral tradition arrives at the same place through a different image: "The river cuts through rock not by force, but by persistence."

Force is not the deciding factor. Continuity and patience are.

A Scottish proverb keeps it fun: "Many a mickle makes a muckle" – many small things make a large thing. Which is, in a way, the most honest version of the lesson – persistence is not glamorous or shiny. It is showing up again, even though nothing visible has changed, because the change is happening beneath the surface.

The common pattern

Across these three idioms, a pattern emerges that goes beyond simple moral equivalence. Each one encodes not just a lesson but a relationship with time – the long view, the patient eye and the willingness to act before results become visible or to keep acting after a setback has already occurred.

In safety, think of danger. Mend the fence before you lose more sheep. Let the water do its quiet work.

These are not urgent instructions but rather habits of mind that accumulate, over a lifetime or a civilization, into a shared, lived wisdom.

Editor's note: Zaruhi Poghosyan is a multimedia editor for CGTN Digital. This article is part of China, Soft Focus – a slow journalism series that offers human-centered glimpses into culture, history and everyday life across China through measured pace and intimate storytelling.