Sun Zi offered to help train the Wu army and turn the state into a more powerful kingdom.

The Chinese expression “騎虎難下” (qí hǔ nán xià), literally “riding a tiger and it being hard to dismount”, is used to describe a situation in which one is stuck in a difficult position with no way out.

“A broken mirror joined together” metaphorically means the reunion of husband and wife after a forced separation. It originated from a story about true love.

The Chinese idiom “力不從心” (lì bù cóng x?n) means “unable to do as one would wish,” or that one’s ability is not equal to one’s ambition. It came from a story about Ban Chao, which is recorded in the “Book of the Later Han” (1).

“Riding a tiger and it being hard to get off of,” is used to describe a situation in which one is stuck in a difficult position with no way out.

The idiom hú jiǎ hǔ wēi, or “a fox exploits a tiger’s might,” came from a story documented in the ancient book “Intrigues of the Warring States.”(1)

The idiom 刮目相看 (guā mù xiāng kàn), translated as “look at a person with new eyes,” originates from a description of Lü Meng(1), the outstanding general of the Wu state.