The number of
proverbs in the
Chinese language is quite staggering. I have a ten-volume collection of all the
Chinese proverbs and a different
story behind each of them. However, there are rare ocassions when the proverbs have three or five
characters. They sometimes teach
morals on
life, mostly of the
Confucian style. You know,
filial piety and all that.
The four-character phrase was very popular in medieval Chinese, especially in old epics where people would convey entire paragraphs using nothing but a string of four letter sentences. That was considered very "eloquent", however, it does make it sometimes ambigious and hard to read and understand. I read the old version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, took me ages to get through. It was compact though, I'll admit that.