📖 Meaning
To take one's enemy for one's father. It is a metaphor for willingly selling oneself out and serving one's enemies or betrayers of one's own people. It is equivalent to the idiom '认贼作父' (to regard a thief as one's father).
📜 Origin Story
This phrase was popularized in modern Chinese literature by the revolutionary writer Fang Zhimin in his 1935 essay 'Lovely China' (《可爱的中国》). Written while he was imprisoned by the Nationalist government before his execution, the work laments that among the Chinese people there are traitors, puppets, and collaborators who 'take enemies as fathers' and act as accomplices to oppressors. Fang condemns such people as a shameful minority betraying the nation during its time of crisis.
💡 Example Usage
那些认仇作父的汉奸，最终都受到了历史的审判。
Those traitors who sold themselves out to the enemy ultimately faced the judgment of history.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 认仇作父
- Pinyin: rèn chóu zuò fù
- Literal Translation: recognize, enemy, treat as, father
- Category: Morality
- Characters: 4