"as close as lips to teeth" (heard on NPR)

[Barbara Need]

This is new to me, but a search of Google for the phrase got 12,000+
hits, most of which seem to connect to the relationship between China
and North Korea (which is how it was used this morning on NPR). When I
tried to eliminate China and Korea, I got 16,000+ Googlehits, but,
except for one reference to the relationship between the US and
Israel, the ones I saw still seemed to connect to China. Is this
originally a Chinese expression? Does it have widespread use beyond
the China-North Korea link?

Barbara

Barbara Need
Ithaca

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org