Chinese Proverbs for Self-Improvement
The Ancient Chinese Proverb that Predicted Online Echo Chambers
On the Saying: “Three People Make a Tiger” (Sān Rén Chéng Hǔ)
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I’ve always been a fan of idiomatic sayings.
Maybe it’s because I grew up in the American South, where someone might feel “finer than frog hair split four ways,” or “as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs,” or even “madder than a wet hen.”
Maybe it’s the down-home wisdom these kinds of expressions can impart…
Whatever the reason, I’ve always delighted in how a good proverb captures something deeply meaningful about the human condition.
In my job as a professor of comparative philosophy, I’ve been afforded the opportunity to discover idioms from other cultures, as well, and the genre that’s become my hands-down favorite is the Chinese chéngyǔ [成語].
These expressions of “ready-made speech” are widely popular in China and usually consist of 4 to 6 Chinese characters. What make chéngyǔ so unique is that that they tend to have their origins in the written language— so, they’re often derived from some classic text or great work of literature. By contrast, Chinese folk-sayings that have been handed down through the spoken language are called yànyǔ [諺語].
I think more people should know about these terrific sources of self-expression! That’s why I’m creating this series — “Chinese Proverbs for Self-Improvement.”
Each post will be devoted to another chéngyǔ, including its historical background, philosophical import, and some context for using it properly.
“Three People Make a Tiger” — Sān Rén Chéng Hǔ [三人成虎]
In Season 1, episode 7 of The Good Place (aka “The Eternal Shriek”) two of the main characters — Eleanor and Chidi — are discussing the ethics of being untruthful…
Chidi: “There’s an old Chinese proverb… “Lies are like tigers. They are bad.”
Eleanor: “That’s it?”
Chidi: “It’s more poetic in Mandarin.”
But, that’s NOT it. NOT AT ALL.
Chidi’s right about one thing… the chéngyǔ he’s referencing is definitely more poetic in Mandarin. “Sān rén chéng hǔ” literally translates to “three people make a tiger,” and it comes from a classic historical text known as Zhan Guo Ce (or, Strategies of the Warring States).
As the story goes, Pang Cong — an advisor to the state of Wei — was concerned about his lord’s tendency to believe rumors within his court. So, one day he asked his king whether or not he would believe a single person, if they reported a tiger was loose in the street.
The king said, “Probably not.”
Pang Cong then asked if he’d believe the tiger story if two people had made separate reports about it.
“I may still doubt it,” the king replied.
Finally, Pang Cong asked if he’d believe it if three people came to him separately, each reporting a tiger in the street.
“Then, I would probably believe it,” was the reply.
“In this way,” Pang Cong concluded, “it can be said ‘three people make a tiger’ even if there is no tiger to be found.”
But the point of this story isn’t just that LIES ARE BAD… it’s that a falsehood can APPEAR true, the more often it gets repeated.
It’s basically an ancient Chinese version of the groupthink that can occur in the echo chambers and epistemic bubbles of social media.
It turns out human beings — whether they’re in 3rd-century-BCE China or 21st-century cyber-space — have a tendency to not fact-check information, especially when it comes from an authority figure or a large group. In the college course I teach on Critical Thinking, we call this the bandwagon fallacy… and it can be every bit as dangerous as a tiger in the street!
Pang Cong understood this, and we’d do well to internalize his lesson.
In the next installment of this series, we’ll look at An Ancient Chinese Proverb for Coping with Crisis. See you there!
