守株待兔
shǒu zhū dài tùA rabbit ran headlong into a tree stump. The farmer dropped his plough and watched the stump for the rest of his life.
The Story · 故事 gùshi
A farmer in the state of Sòng was tilling his field when a rabbit, running at full speed, struck a tree stump at the edge of the field, broke its neck, and died. The farmer picked up the rabbit and went home. That evening his family ate well.
The next day the farmer abandoned his plough. He sat by the stump and waited. He waited the next day, and the day after that, and through the season. No rabbit came. His field went untilled. The land of Sòng laughed at him.
The story comes from the 韩非子 (Hánfēizǐ), the masterwork of the Legalist philosopher Hán Fēi (d. 233 BCE). It appears in the chapter 五蠹 ("Wǔ dù," "The Five Vermin"), where Hán Fēi uses it as a polemic against the Confucians. The Confucians, he argues, want to govern the present by the methods of the ancient sage-kings. But the methods that worked in one age are like the stump that yielded a rabbit once: to expect them to yield again is to abandon the plough of present circumstance and stare at a piece of dead wood.
Meaning · 含义 hányì
The chengyu describes someone who waits passively for a stroke of luck to repeat itself, who mistakes an accident for a method, who refuses to do the ordinary work because they are watching for the extraordinary event. The English phrase that comes closest is "waiting for lightning to strike twice" — but the Chinese version carries a sharper edge of judgement. The farmer is not unfortunate; he is foolish, and he has earned the laughter.
The original Legalist context gives the idiom its bite. Hán Fēi's target is anyone who treats the past as a working blueprint for the present. In modern Chinese the idiom retains that edge: a manager applying a tactic that worked once in a different market, an investor riding a single past success into ruin, a student who got a top grade by luck and stops studying.
Usage · 用法 yòngfǎ
Said of someone who has had one piece of unearned good fortune and now structures their life around expecting more of it. The criticism is not of the original luck but of the abandonment of effort that follows. The farmer's first rabbit was fine. The mistake was the dropped plough.
Hán Fēi's original sense — clinging to a method that worked in one context and assuming it will work in another. A common business and political criticism. To call a strategy 守株待兔 is to say it is not a strategy at all but the absence of one, dressed in the costume of patience.
不努力工作就想发财，那是守株待兔。(Bù nǔlì gōngzuò jiù xiǎng fācái, nà shì shǒu zhū dài tù.) — Wanting to get rich without working hard is just guarding the stump and waiting for rabbits.
Character Analysis · 字解 zìjiě
To guard, to keep watch over, to defend. The 宀 (roof) radical above 寸 (hand-measure) suggests someone keeping vigil under a roof. Compounds: 守护 (to protect), 保守 (conservative), 遵守 (to abide by). The farmer's posture by the stump is literally 守 — patient, fixed, waiting for what is supposed to come.
Tree stump, the stub of a tree. The 木 (tree) radical on the left makes the meaning visible; the 朱 (vermilion) on the right carries the sound. Also a measure word for trees: 一株树 ("one tree"). The choice of 株 rather than 树 (tree) is precise — the rabbit hit something dead, not living, and the farmer's wait inherits that deadness.
To wait, to await. The 彳 (step) radical on the left and 寺 (temple) on the right give a sense of standing in place along a path. 待 contrasts with 等 (děng, also "to wait") in carrying a stronger sense of expectation: 等 is neutral waiting; 待 is waiting for something. The farmer is not just waiting; he is expecting.
Rabbit, hare. One of the older pictographs — the small dot at the bottom right is conventionally the tail. Rabbits in Chinese folklore are creatures of the moon (the Moon Rabbit, 月兔, pounds the elixir of immortality there). In this parable, however, the rabbit is purely accidental: a fast animal, a hard object, a coincidence the farmer mistook for a sign.