4 characters Idiom and proverb 12 998

Our mission is to provide free tools for learning Chinese. This series explores idioms and proverbs, meaningful phrases worth knowing. Today’s idiom: 「卻行求前」.

Learn about the idiom 「卻行求前」: its definition and how it’s used are detailed here.

It means to move forward by going backwards, which is a metaphor for the wrong method, and therefore it is impossible to achieve the goal.

The Mandarin pronunciation of this idiom is :

què háng qiú qián

while its Cantonese pinyin is :

keuk3 haang4/hong4/hang4 kau4 chin4

There are a countless number of Chinese idioms, each with unique meanings and applications. We’ve provided these resources to help guide you as you dive deeper into learning Chinese.