Chinese proverbs

These are many proverbs, idioms, and curses commonly attributed to be Chinese whose authenticity and provenance as being Chinese is in question.

Unlikely

These are proverbs which are unlikely to come from any of the Chinese languages.

• May you live in interesting times
• May you come to the attention of those in authority
• May you find what you are looking for
• A picture is worth a thousand words
• Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Chinese proverb.
• If you want one year of prosperity, plant corn

If you want ten years of prosperity, plant trees

If you want one hundred years of prosperity, educate people

Variant: If you are planning for one year, grow rice. If you are planning for 20 years, grow trees. If you are planning for centuries, grow men.

• Big fish eat small fish (大鱼吃小鱼)
  • Variant: big fish eat small fish, small fish eat shrimp, shrimp eat mud. (大鱼吃小鱼，小鱼吃虾米)
• A dried fish cannot be used as a cat's pillow
• Keep a green tree in your heart, and perhaps a songbird will come
• The fish sees the bait, not the hook; a person sees the gain, not the danger
• Schools of fish come to those who wait patiently; if the big ones don't come, the little ones will
• Blood is thicker than water
• No money no talk
• Dog eat dog (bone)—actually an English expression, originally dog don't eat dog, or criminals don't prey on each other; similar to 'honor among thieves'

Possible

These expressions may come from Chinese but their authenticity is in doubt; alternately, their form has been corrupted such that it is difficult to tell if the expression is Chinese in origin or if the two expressions were developed separately.

• Even the longest journey must start from where you stand
  • Variant: Even the longest journey begins with a single step
  • This is a corruption of A journey of a thousand miles began with a single step from the Tao Te Ching (although a thousand-mile journey, like a ten-thousand item shop or Shinto's Eight Million Gods, is just an expression meaning 'really a lot')

Likely

These expressions are very similar to Chinese proverbs, making this origin likely.

• Long time no see (this is a word-for-word translation of "好久不见"/"hao3 jiu3 bu4 jian4" which is a common expression in Mandarin; it is therefore quite plausible the phrase entered the English language from Chinese)