Lost in translation? These proverbs never were | Pt. 4

There is a celebrated piece of classical satirical prose written by Liu Ji, a scholar and strategist of the early Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), titled "The words of the orange seller." 

It tells the story of a Hangzhou man man who was skilled at selling oranges. He could keep them stored through winter and summer without their spoiling, preserving their golden color and fragrance. But when you peeled them open, the flesh inside was dry and withered like old cotton floss. 

When confronted about it, the seller shrugs. People buy with their eyes, he says. The world rewards appearances, so why should he supply anything more?

In this installment, we'll go into three more idioms in Chinese and three clusters of global parallels: on appearances that deceive, on nature that refuses to change and on the impossibility of hiding what you fundamentally are. 

1. On appearances: 金玉其外，败絮其中 (Jin yu qi wai, bai xu qi zhong) – Gold and jade on the outside, rotting cotton within

In the essay, Liu Ji confronts the seller, asking him, "Are you selling these to deceive people?"

The world, the seller replies, is full of generals and officials whose reputations gleam and whose conduct does not. Why should oranges be held to a higher standard?

The English equivalent carries the same warning in a different register, all that glitters is not gold – a phrase most people know from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, though the thought is older than Shakespeare. It appears in Geoffrey Chaucer, and before Chaucer in medieval Latin: non omne quod nitet aurum est. 

As we see, the specific image of gold as a test of authenticity recurs across cultures. Arabic puts it plainly: ليس كل ما يلمع ذهبا – not everything that shines is gold. The Spanish say "no es oro todo lo que reluce." The French, "tout ce qui brille n'est pas or."

Liu Ji's fruit seller knew it. So did Shakespeare's Portia. So does anyone who has ever bought something that looked better in the photos, forgetting to check the real reviews.

2. On unchangeable nature: 江山易改，本性难移 (Jiangshan yi gai, benxing nan yi) – Rivers and mountains may change, but one's nature is hard to alter

The most ancient version of this thought in the Western tradition comes not from a philosopher but from a prophet. The Book of Jeremiah, written in the 6th century BC, asks the rhetorical question, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard its spots?" From this biblical image the English language drew one of its most durable proverbs – a leopard cannot change its spots.

An African proverb, developed entirely independently of Jeremiah, is almost eerily close to the biblical one, "Rain beats a leopard's skin, but it does not wash out the spots."

The wolf, meanwhile, became the animal of choice across much of Europe. Italian offers one of the most elegant versions in any language, "il lupo perde il pelo ma non il vizio" – the wolf loses its fur but not its habits. The wolf ages, the fur falls away, the seasons change and still the habits remain.

Greek tradition has also been skeptical of the wolf's capacity for change. In Aesop's fable, the wolf merely disguises itself, draping a sheep's fleece over the same predatory nature. The costume changes; the hunger doesn't.

Spanish makes a logical observation, "genio y figura hasta la sepultura" – character and nature stay until the grave. Where other cultures hedge slightly, allowing for the possibility that change might theoretically occur even if it rarely does, the Spanish formulation is absolute. The grave is the only finish line.

The Russian equivalent goes, "Горбатого могила исправит" – literally, "only the grave will straighten the hunchback."

French dresses the same idea in theatrical clothing, "chassez le naturel, il revient au galop" – drive out nature and it returns at a gallop. 

What this cluster of sayings reveals is something the series has been circling since its first installment: that the most universal human observations tend to generate the most local imagery. The actors may differ by geography, by what was nearby and familiar. The mirror they hold up is the same.

3. On the impossibility of hiding what you fundamentally are – 沐猴而冠 (mu hou er guan) – a monkey wearing a crown

There is a family of sayings closely related to the previous two that shifts the question slightly – from "looks can be deceptive" to "so can appearance conceal it?" The answer, across cultures, is equally unanimous: no.

In 206 BC, the warlord Xiang Yu seized the Qin Dynasty's (221 to 206 BC) capital Xianyang and then decided to abandon it and move his seat of power back to his hometown. His adviser Han Sheng, furious at the strategic folly, muttered to those around him that Xiang Yu was 沐猴而冠 – a monkey wearing a crown. Han Sheng was executed for the remark. The story has a darkly ironic coda; the adviser was killed for saying the thing – but Xiang Yu went on to lose the war, his empire and ultimately his life, to Liu Bang, who became the first Han emperor. The idiom outlived them both by more than two millennia.

The 18th-century Spanish fabulist Tomas de Iriarte, drawing on an earlier Aesop fable, wrote of a monkey who becomes an accomplished dancer and performs for the king. The audience is entranced by its grace and human-like elegance. Then a spectator throws a handful of nuts onto the stage. The monkey immediately drops its performance, tears off the costume and scrambles for the nuts. The proverb the story crystallized – "aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda," or "monkey, clothed in silk, will a monkey still remain," became one of the most widely known sayings in the Spanish-speaking world.

The Latin root of this whole European family is older and more austere. The Greeks first formulated it as "a beard does not make a philosopher" – "barba non facit philosophum." In the medieval period, the image migrated into monastery culture and became "cucullus non facit monachum" – the cowl does not make the monk – attested in French as early as the 13th century. One legend even ties it to a specific historical episode: in 1297, François Grimaldi disguised himself as a monk to gain entry to a castle in Monaco, then opened the gates to his waiting army. The event was considered so emblematic of the gap between appearance and reality that it was later depicted on the Monegasque coat of arms – two friars holding swords.

Italians keep the monk, "l'abito non fa il monaco" – the habit does not make the monk. The French echoes it: "l'habit ne fait pas le moine."

We have always known that what a thing appears to be and what it is are not the same. We have also always suspected that character outlasts circumstance. And we have always, in every language, found a way to say so – usually with an animal, often with some resignation and occasionally with the kind of dark humor that suggests we find the whole situation as absurd as it is inevitable.

Some things, it turns out, don't change. Including our habit of noticing that.

Other articles in the series: Lost in translation? These proverbs never were | Pt.2 and Pt.3 

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.