Hi everyone!
Welcome back to ChinesePod.
This is Nico.
And today, I'm going to teach you a 成语 (Chéngyǔ) about "courage."
So, if you're in the middle of a hardship or currently dealing with a very difficult challenge,
maybe this 成语 (Chéngyǔ) will motivate you and push you forward.
Sounds good, right?
Let's get started.
Here comes today's four character idiom
The first character
fourth tone, which means "to break"
And our second character
third tone, stands for "pot"
As you can see, the radical at the bottom of this character is
which means "metal".
In ancient China, when people cooked
they used pots that were made out of metal.
Therefore,
means "pot"
The third character
second tone
And on your left hand side is its radical
implying that this word has something to do with "water"
And on your right hand side,
you can see that there are two parts
And don't you think that the upper part kind of looks like "water"
And the lower part just looks like "something is going into the water"?
So the word
means "to sink into the water"
And finally our fourth character
first tone
is an elegant way of saying
You're more familiar with the word
means "boat"
If you compare the two characters together
you can see that on the left side of
is literally the word
So
shares the same meaning with
Now, if you take a look again at this 成语 (Chéngyǔ)
you can probably tell why I like this 成语 (Chéngyǔ) so much
as it is so symmetrical, so beautiful
It goes like this
verb - noun - verb - noun
Now, you know the beauty of this idiom,
let's learn more about this 成语 (Chéngyǔ) with today's captivating background story
The idiom stems from an ancient Chinese warrior 项羽 (Xiàng Yù)
from the Qing Dynasty.
The emperor sent him on a mission
to win a battle in order to save another state Zhao
After crossing the famous Yellow River
However, because of the bitter weather and the limited food supplies
the soldiers were all afraid to face the battle against a much stronger army
with more soldiers and resources.
To fix this problem, you wouldn't believe what 项羽 (Xiàng Yù) did next
Yù ordered the soldiers to sink all the boats,
break all the pots
and even burn the camps.
He told his soldiers "We will launch a decisive battle against the enemy."
"Either your enemy dies or you die."
"No victory, no return!"
Realizing that there's no turning back,
the soldiers shouted aloud with no fear.
So fearless that the enemies ended up feeling frightened and running away.
Of course at the end of the day,
项羽 (Xiàng Yù) brought victory home along with his proud soldiers.
Nowadays, based on the story
is used to describe "someone with great determination to succeed no matter what"
For example you can say
"In order to fulfill my dream, I made up my mind to put in great effort without giving up."
That's all for today.
Lately, do you have any goals on your mind?
Maybe you want to lose a bit of weight that you gained during the quarantine
or maybe you have found the dream job that you've always wanted to do.
All of these requires you to
So make a sentence down below with this idiom.
Tell me about your goals and your dream.
Also
Nico
And I'll see you next time.
Bye-bye!