Chinese idioms from the Dao De Jing
治大国若烹小鲜 (zhì dà guó ruò pēng xiǎo xiān)
Word for word from chapter 60
治大国若烹小鲜 (zhì dà guó ruò pēng xiǎo xiān), “govern a great state as you would cook a small fish”, opens chapter 60 of the Dao De Jing: rule with a light hand and do not keep stirring.
Character by character
| 治 | zhì | to govern; in order |
|---|---|---|
| 大 | dà | great, big |
| 国 | guó | the state |
| 若 | ruò | like, as if |
| 烹 | pēng | to cook |
| 小 | xiǎo | small |
| 鲜 | xiān | small fish |
| 治大国若烹小鲜 | Governing, or running anything large, calls for a light and steady hand: too much stirring breaks it apart. | |
Where it comes from
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治大国，若烹小鲜。
Govern a great state as you would cook a small fish.
How the meaning moved
These are the Han characters of the first line of chapter 60: “Govern a great state as you would cook a small fish.” A small fish falls apart if it is turned too often in the pan. The chapter goes on: “When the Way presides over the world, ghosts have no power”, and ends with neither ghosts nor the sage harming the people, so that “their virtue flows back to the people.”
The Han Feizi, an early reader of the book, spells out the comparison: cook a small fish and keep stirring it, and you spoil it; govern a great state and keep changing the laws, and the people suffer; so a ruler who has the Way values stillness and does not change the laws lightly. That is still the meaning today: a warning against restless policy and constant reform, said of a country, a company or a school.
The line is one of the best known in the book outside China. Ronald Reagan quoted it in his State of the Union address of 1988: “Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish; do not overdo it.” In Chinese it is also often quoted with 如 in place of 若, both meaning “like”.
Using it today
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治大国若烹小鲜，政策不能朝令夕改。
zhì dà guó ruò pēng xiǎo xiān, zhèng cè bù néng zhāo lìng xī gǎi.
Govern a great state as you would cook a small fish: policies must not change from morning to evening.
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管一家大公司也是治大国若烹小鲜，翻来覆去地折腾，只会把事情搞砸。
guǎn yī jiā dà gōng sī yě shì zhì dà guó ruò pēng xiǎo xiān, fān lái fù qù de zhē teng, zhǐ huì bǎ shì qing gǎo zá.
Running a big company is also like cooking a small fish: keep turning things over and you will only make a mess of it.