Chinese Idioms

Chinese idioms are the fixed phrases or short sentences in a language. It, Chinese idiom, has a fix structure and a fix statement which are used to express certain meanings or portrays a complete meaning itself. Chinese has a long history with lots of idioms, which is also a uniqueness of Chinese language.

Chinese idioms are mainly composed of four characters. It is rare that the idiom has more than four characters, such as "Wu Shi Bu Xiao Bai Bu-the pot calls the kettle black", "Yi Shu Ze Bu Da-Haste makes waste", "Zhui Wu Zhi Yi Bu Zai Jiu -having ulterior motives". It has something to do with the Chinese syntactic structure and single-syllable Chinese words.

Be an armchair strategist engage in idle theorizing:

Interpretation: Talking about a war on paper,  an analogy to talk about empty theory, unable to solve practical problems. The figure of speech means that an empty talk cannot become a reality.

Source: "the Historian, Lian Po and Lin Xian gru biography" records: Zhao Kuo, the son of the the famous general Zhao She in the Warring States, began to learn military strategies and could win over his father, in speaking of the martial tactics. Later on, he took the place of Lian Po and became a general of Zhao State. In the war of Changping, he commanded the soldiers according to the book of Art of War but could not adapt himself to concrete circumstances, and thus, utterly defeated by Qin army.