A friend over at the UCI Library emails me with some great excerpts from a book of Chinese idioms:
UCI got another book about Chinese idioms today, and it’s a lot of fun. Since I already told you about “eating dates whole” and “one day of sun and ten days of rain”, I figured you might find some of these interesting/amusing, too. (I’m particularly fond of the first one, since it explains Hong Kong cinema and vice versa …)
— “to start a movie” —
(to cause a fight among rival gangs)
“Hey! Let’s go start a movie with the Tseng triad!”
— “to drop an orange then pick up a tangarine” —
(to recover some of your losses)
“After the stock market crashed, I lost a lot of oranges, but I found some tangerines, too”
— “to throw down the cooking pot” —
(to divorce)
“Things haven’t been the same since mom and dad threw down the cooking pot.”
— “the roof only leaks on a rainy night” —
(troubles have a way of compounding and overlapping)
“I should have known that this store would be closed when I am in desperate need of some asprin — after all, the roof only leaks on a rainy night”
— “to be slapped by a ghost” —
(when a person bluntly reveals the truth about a situation)
“He finally told me about the affair he’d been having. He must have been slapped by a ghost.”
— “big food” —
(to take more than your share of the entree, and less than your share of the rice that’s meant to accompany it — to be greedy)
“Watch out for him. He’s big food — he’ll take all your money and leave
you with none”