Sayings are an extremely important part of traditional Chinese culture, the earliest born in the folk, and because of the extremely important influence on the people, so it has been recorded by people in the elite cultural class, the earliest colloquialism in the history books, is the Western Han Dynasty Sima Qian in the "History", recorded in the "History", "the folk saying Yunhe Bo marries a woman, the water comes to float, drowns its people."
It can be seen that the earliest sayings still have strange and grotesque parts, but gradually later, the sayings are basically only the details of people's lives, such as "sons are like mothers, gold brick walls" related to children's education.
The so-called "hope to become a son into a dragon, hope that the daughter will become a phoenix", from the first day of the birth of the child, the parents will inevitably have great expectations for it, but how can the specific children become dragons and phoenixes? This is something that people can't really grasp, and "sons are like mothers, and gold bricks and walls" provide a specific methodology in a certain sense.
The "image" here does not refer to the appearance of the image, but a character image, that is, the son himself as a boy, his nature will have that strong and indomitable trait, everything wants to win or lose, will not be very gentle to deal with a thing. And if he can have the gentleness of a mother while being strong as a boy, and can express "softness" in dealing with others, then he is very likely to achieve great success in his career.
Why? We can explain it with the deeds of a historical figure, Zeng Guofan, who grew up studying, and although he took many examinations to become an official in the DPRK, he had a high arrogance in his heart for a long time and looked down on other officials.
The direct result of this is that when Zeng Guofan needed help, no one was willing to help him, and he fell into passive isolation in the entire official arena. Zeng Guofan went back to his hometown for a period of time in desperation, read the Tao Te Ching bitterly, and finally understood the truth that "there is no weaker husband than water, and the strong man can win", so he returned to Zeng Guofan in Changsha again, with an extremely humble posture, which allowed him to quickly and completely integrate into it, and finally trained a crack army.
The reason why Zeng Guofan has a completely different situation in Changsha is because the former is completely out of the heart of men to do things, while the latter is because he has understood how to make himself better survive, and the qualities that some mothers have: tolerance, softness, tenacity, etc., have been integrated into his body, making him feel like a fish.
Behind the "son like a mother, a golden brick wall", there is also the second half of the sentence about the daughter, in fact, this is the real essence of this saying, that is, "the daughter is like a father, eating and wearing is not lacking", the girl's personality has a part like the father, that means that she is in addition to the weakness of the woman, but also has her own strength, in the face of big things, you can do your own judgment and choice, rather than all rely on others, which allows girls to really control their own destiny, determine their own life.