Hi everyone!
Welcome back to ChinesePod.
This is Nico.
In today's video, I will teach you another Chéng yǔ
I really like this idiom.
It's very symmetrical, as all the characters are put together in this sequence
Verb + Noun + Verb + Noun
So when people use this Chéng yǔ
It often leaves a good and long lasting impression on your audience.
First, let's break it down.
The idiom comes in four characters.
The first character
first tone
is "to throw" or "to cast"
And I'll teach you a super fun way to remember this one.
The radical of this character is on your left hand side
which means "hand"
And on the other side, you can see another character
which stands for "power"
So this word has something to do with "powerful hands"
To throw something far, far away,
you will need powerful hands.
That's how you remember this word. So
means "to throw"
And our second character
first tone is a simple one
stands for "brick"
And here comes the change of tone.
The third character
third tone
is a verb, which means "to attract"
Last but not least, the final character
fourth tone is another simple one
stands for "jade"
So
What does it mean "To throw brick to attract jade?"
I know by now you're probably a bit confused
thinking, uh, i'm not actually that familiar with bricks and jade
Don't worry, me neither.
Well, you know the drill.
Let's hear a background story behind this idiom first
so that you can learn this journey fast
and use it correctly in your daily life.
During the Tang Dynasty,
there was a gifted poet who admired another poet, Zhao Gu, a lot
One day, a little bird told him
that Zhao Gu was coming to his town.
Hearing the news, he was overjoyed and thought to himself,
"I must let Zhao write some good poems, but the problem is how?"
Suddenly, he thought of Ling Yan Temple
a must-see place of wonder in his town
And assumed that Zhao would definitely visit the place.
He came up with a brilliant plan.
In the middle of the night, he rushed to the temple
And wrote only two, not so good, lines on the wall of the temple.
The next day, the great poet really paid a visit to the place
And guess what?
He was aroused by the unfinished poem on the wall
and thus added two more wonderful lines
to form a complete poem.
Based on the story,
is used to refer to the method of using something more shallow or ordinary
in exchange of something extraordinary or even perfect
For example, you can say
"The charity sale today is held in the hope of inviting more people to participate in the future"
And since this idiom is also used to "express modesty"
Another example would be
"My speech is only served to invite more people to speak up."
That's all for today.
And I would like to
Inviting you to leave a sentence using this Chéng yǔ down below
And if you have more questions about this idiom
nǐ de Chéng yǔ Lǎoshī Nico, will get back to you as soon as possible.
Thanks for joining me.
I'm Nico
xià cì jiàn
Bye, bye!