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 「鷸蚌相持」, explained below.
The idiom 「鷸蚌相持」 is the focus of our introduction today, and its explanation and application are listed below.
“The Warring States Policy: The Policy of Yan II” records: The clam opened its shell to bask in the sun, and the snipe went to peck at it, but its mouth was clamped in the clam shell, and neither side would give in. The fisherman came and caught them both. It is a metaphor that a dispute between two parties results in both parties suffering losses, and a third party benefits.
The Mandarin pronunciation of this idiom is :
yù bàng xiàng chí
while its Cantonese pinyin is :
wat6 pong5 seung2 chi4
The vastness of Chinese idioms, with their many meanings and applications, is inspiring. We hope these resources will guide you in your language-learning adventure.
