The meaning of the Chinese idiom: 胸有成竹 (bamboo in the chest)
The Chinese idiom 胸有成竹 (xiōng yǒu chéng zhú）literally translates to having bamboo growing in your chest. It’s used when referring to someone who has a well-thought-out plan.
What does bamboo in the chest have to do with being confident about a plan?
Well, Chinese idioms, or 成语， are commonly used to convey complex ideas using only four characters. Many times, these idioms originate from an interesting event or person that went viral back in ancient times.
Here’s the interested origin story behind the idiom, 胸有成竹。
The story behind the Chinese idiom: 胸有成竹
It all started back in the Northern Song dynasty (北宋 960—1127). There was a guy named Wen Tong (文同) who loved to draw bamboos.
But Wen Tong didn’t want to just draw bamboo. He was driven to perfect the depiction of bamboo. No matter the season, regardless of the weather, Wen Tong would go into the bamboo forest. There he would carefully observe the bamboo, using his fingers to measure the distance between segments, and count the leaves to measure their density.
Just knowing what bamboo looked like wasn’t enough for him. He also wanted to know how bamboo changed through the day, how they were affected by external factors. What did bamboo look like in the spring, summer, fall, and winter? How different were their colors under the sun, the shade, in rain, or snow? Then there’s the difference of bamboo in moonlight versus sunlight. And of course, he also studied the unique attributes of each different species of bamboo.
Wen Tong was obsessed with bamboo
Nothing could stop Wen Tong from pursuing his passion. For example, during thunderstorms, when everyone else ran home, Wen Tong would grab his straw hat and run into the bamboo forest. Judging by what we know of lightning, that probably wasn’t such a great idea. But all Wen Ton cared about was to see what bamboo looked like in a storm. He carefully observed the bamboo stalks as they swayed in the wind and rain, and memorized their dynamic forms.
How Wen Tong’s bamboo expertise led to the creation of the Chinese idiom 胸有成竹
And so, over time, Wen Tong knew bamboo so well that he never needed to look at reference books again. And the bamboo he drew looked so realistic that people began to spread the word that when Wen Tong drew bamboo, he already had bamboo growing in his chest before he put it down on paper.
“文同画竹，早已胸有成竹了。”
And so, over time, the phrase 胸有成竹, having bamboo in your heart, became a common idiom used when referring to someone who is confident in their plans of doing something.
