Chinese sayings: 52 (一意孤行)

一意孤行

yī yì gū xíng

"one intent solitary move"

This saying is about being wilful, going one's own way against the rules or instructions.

    On Tuesdays, I teach online a small group of septuagenarians and octogenarians, all overseas Chinese bar one.

    I go through the same routine outlined in the blog Strategies for learning Chinese vocabulary:  01 (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/01/strategies-for-learning-chinese.html).

    For some reason, however, some of them keep giving me the wrong thing, e.g., when I ask the class for the literal breakdown, I will get the final polished-English version.

    Every now and then, they'll tell me that it's because they can't hear me properly, or there is a time lapse because of the not-ideal connection.  I say, "But we go through the same routine every week!"

    This week just gone, I was teaching the Mandarin class from a community centre, which has very good internet signal, plus I had a quiet room for my own use.  (This is because I am teaching an English conversation class for the community centre very soon after my Mandarin class.  The gap between the two classes isn't enough for me to fit in the travelling from home to the community centre, so I have to do the travelling first thing in the morning and teach my Mandarin class from there.)

    Yet, in spite of the excellent signal, for an exercise involving a sentence mentioning a 哥哥 gēge / older brother and a 弟弟 dìdi / younger brother, what came back from one student was a 妹妹 mèimei / younger sister.  Now where did the 妹妹 spring up from??!!

    (Yes, the students know I'll be writing a blog about them.  They learned a new phrase from me for this:  一意孤行 / yī yì gū xíng.  Determined to go their own way, indeed.)

(London, 2026)

This saying goes back to 202–101 BCE, no less, from: 

史記·酷吏列傳 

史记·酷吏列传 

Biographies of Cruel Officials, Records of the Grand Historian

(Grand Historian Sima Qian / 司馬遷 / 司马迁 145/135 BCE – ?)

Definition of the saying: 

(traditional script) 不接受別人的勸告，固執地按照自己的想法去做事，通常帶有貶義，形容人主觀、專斷、獨斷獨行。它源自《史記·酷吏列傳》，原意是拒絕請託，獨立處理公事，後來演變成不聽勸告、固執己見的貶義。

(simplified script) 不接受别人的劝告，固执地按照自己的想法去做事，通常带有贬义，形容人主观、专断、独断独行。它源自《史记·酷吏列传》，原意是拒绝请托，独立处理公事，后来演变成不听劝告、固执己见的贬义。

(google translate) To refuse advice and stubbornly act according to one's own ideas is usually a derogatory term, describing a person as subjective, arbitrary, and headstrong. It originates from the "Biographies of Cruel Officials" in the *Records of the Grand Historian*, originally meaning to refuse requests and handle official business independently. Later, it evolved into a derogatory term for ignoring advice and being stubborn.