Informant KY is my aunt who was born and raised in Shanghai, and came to the states when she was in her late 20s.

Original: 畫蛇添足

Phonetic: hua she tian zu

Translation: draw snake add feet

So tell me where this proverb came from

KL: “So a long time ago in China, they prayed to Buddha and stuff right? So one day after praying this dude had a bottle of wine left and he was going to share it with his friends but he didn’t have enough. So he thought ‘why don’t I have them do a competition where they draw a snake. The first person to finish drawing a snake will get to have this wine all to himself’. So, the guy tells his friends and his friends are all down. They begin their drawing. Eventually one guy finishes, but he sees everyone is still drawing so he laughs out loud and says ‘man i can add feet to this snake and still be faster than you guys’. Which is exactly what he did, he began to draw feet for the snake. However, while this guy was drawing his feet for his snake someone else finishes and take the bottle of wine. The guy who got the bottle of wine turns to the guy drawing the feet and says “why would you even draw feet on a snake, snake don’t have feet dumbass’. ”

okay so is that it or what do this proverb mean?

KL: “Basically the point of this proverb is to tell people to not do more than they need to, because sometimes doing more will only cause you more trouble.”

Thoughts: A lot of Chinese proverbs are based off of stories to teach a lesson, and the proverb literally spells out what happens in the story. I think even though this saying has a point, many times doing extra can still pay off. For example, doing extra work at a job may get you a raise, or going above and beyond in homework will get you a better grade etc.