‘莫将大池看做路’

“莫将大池看做路” literally means don’t mistake a pond for a road when walking at night.’莫将’ means don’t.’大池’ means pond in Teochew dialect.’看做’means consider as.’路’ means road,besides this, in Teochew dialect, it also means an opportunity for development.

Therefore,This sentence is also often used to advise young people to be discerning, carefully identify, take a long-term view, not just focus on immediate happiness, and avoid being cheated or catching bad habits.

Just practice how to say this sentence in Teochew as below:

Gambling addiction

There was a gambler in a village. He often gambled for three days and three nights until dawn. If he fell down halfway, he would lie down on the road and sleep. He would go home only if a passerby happened to trip him and woke him up.

Fell into a pond

That night, he returned home after gambling as usual. In the middle of the night, he was bumpy all the way and couldn’t open his eyelids. The big pond was the only way for him to go home. In the moonlight, he walked forward dimly. The pond was no different from the road under the moonlight.

He thought the big pond was the road, stepped into it, fell into the water, and woke up with a wet body. The villagers took him home and said: Don’t think of the big pond as a road, you won’t fall into the water. The words were double-edged, advising him not to get addicted to gambling.

Profligate youth

There was another young man in the village who went into business very early. He made a lot of money and lived a luxurious life. He squandered it at will. Within a few years, he had spent all his money and was in trouble. His relatives advised him: If he had spent money ‘莫将大池看做路'(“not to treat the big pond as a road”), there would not be the difficulty of the solar eclipse today.

‘莫将大池看做路’.It also has a double meaning to teach those who do not know the direction in life, do not live frugally within their means, that they will end up in a difficult situation.