yán​wáng​hǎo​jiàn​xiǎo​guǐ​nán​dāng

the King of Hell is easy to see, but the little devils are hard to deal with

  1. King of Hell
    Yama, the king and judge of the dead in Buddhist tradition
  2. hǎo adjective
    easy to
    easy to; used before a verb to show that an action is easy to perform
  3. to meet
    to meet with; to call on; to interview or receive a visitor
  4. xiǎo
    non-Chinese
  5. villain
    a metaphor for a person of low status who causes trouble or is difficult to deal with, often used in the idiom that 'one can easily deal with the king of hell, but it is hard to deal with his underlings'
  6. nán adjective
    difficult
    difficult; hard to do; troublesome; not easy; problematic; the opposite of 容易 róng​yì
  7. to withstand
    To withstand; to resist; to match equally