百折不挠 vs 青出于蓝: Which Chengyu Fits?

How to decide

1. Reach for 百折不挠 when the sentence points to to remain unyielding after many setbacks. Its tone is admiring and determined, and the safest first test is whether the context resembles personal resilience, team effort, language learning.
2. Bring in 青出于蓝 when the sentence points to the student surpasses the teacher. Its tone is admiring and generous, and the strongest clue usually looks closer to teacher and student, successor generation, creative work.
3. The shared ground is narrow: both appear in effort and learning situations. The difference is not the Chinese topic label but the job each phrase performs in a sentence.
4. A safe English first pass is unyielding for 百折不挠 and the student surpasses the teacher for 青出于蓝, then check whether the surrounding sentence needs praise, warning, correction, or neutral description.

Wrong choice checks

• 百折不挠: Do not use it for stubbornness when the method is clearly wrong.
• 青出于蓝: Do not use it for any young person who is simply successful; the relation to a source or teacher must be visible.
• Do not let the story image do all the work. Check what the speaker is judging before you pick either phrase.
• Do not swap the two phrases just because they share a theme. A nearby topic can still carry the wrong social judgment.

Where this comparison comes from

• Both phrases have full dictionary entries with examples, source notes, and usage boundaries.
• The comparison uses entry-level source references instead of adding new historical claims on the compare page.
• The page exists because learners often need to reject a near phrase, not only recognize a single chengyu.

• 百折不挠: CC-CEDICT dictionary cross-check via MDBG
  Used to cross-check the modern headword, pinyin, and broad dictionary sense for 百折不挠; this is not treated as the story source.
• 百折不挠: Wiktionary open lexical reference
  Used as an open lexical reference for English readers checking the headword and common translation range for 百折不挠; usage decisions still come from examples on this page.
• 百折不挠: Chinese Text Project dictionary locator
  Used as a classical-text locator and Chinese reference cross-check for 百折不挠; the entry still rewrites the learner explanation in this site's own order.
• 青出于蓝: Xunzi Encouraging Learning image tradition
  Use this as the broad Xunzi locator for the indigo dye learning image; the entry keeps inheritance and surpassing visible together.
• 青出于蓝: CC-CEDICT dictionary cross-check via MDBG
  Used to cross-check the modern headword, pinyin, and broad dictionary sense for 青出于蓝; this is not treated as the story source.
• 青出于蓝: Wiktionary open lexical reference
  Used as an open lexical reference for English readers checking the headword and common translation range for 青出于蓝; usage decisions still come from examples on this page.
• 青出于蓝: Chinese Text Project dictionary locator
  Used as a classical-text locator and Chinese reference cross-check for 青出于蓝; the entry still rewrites the learner explanation in this site's own order.

Visual memory: The board keeps both phrases visible at once so the learner decides by tone, context, and mistake boundary.