Learning Chinese starts with basic single characters, but the next step is combining them into words. To go even further, mastering idioms is the challenge. Here, we offer free resources to help you explore advanced Chinese idioms. Today’s idiom is 「雙鳧一雁」, explained below.
For this session, we will be discussing the idiom 「雙鳧一雁」. See below for its meaning and practical usage.
Su Wu of the Han Dynasty was captured by the Xiongnu while on his diplomatic mission. When he returned home, he left a farewell poem for Li Ling, in which there was a line “Two ducks fly north, only one wild goose flies south”. Later, “two ducks and one wild goose” was used to express the sadness of parting.
The Mandarin pronunciation of this idiom is :
shuāng fú yī yàn
while its Cantonese pinyin is :
seung1 fu4 yat1 ngaan6
There are a countless number of Chinese idioms, each with unique meanings and applications. We’ve provided these resources to help guide you as you dive deeper into learning Chinese.
