ChinaPulse.com

A Word is Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold

Characters:

Pronunciation: Yi(2) Zi(4) Qian(1) Jin(1)

Explanation: Said of a well-composed essay or poem with ingenious use of words.

The Story: The leader of the state of Qin, Lu Buwei, gathered his followers at the end of the Warring States Period.

At that time he composed a book of 26 chapters comprising 200,000 words and called it "Lu's Annals." He was very pleased with his great works and had it posted on Xianyang's city gates for all the people to see. He said that if anybody could add or delete a word from his great work, Lu Buwei himself would award the person 1000 gold pieces for each word changed. Lu Buwei was too powerful, though, and nobody had the guts to change his seemingly great writing.


Usage Example (Pinyin):Hao(3) hao(3) xue(2) xi(1) zhe(4) ben(3) shu(1), ta(1) yi(4) zi(4) qian(1) jin(1). ni(3) hui(4) shou(1) yi(4) hen(3) da(4).

Usage Example (English translation): Study this book for it is "a word worth a thousand pieces of gold" work. I am sure you will benefit much.

Note: The spoken Chinese Mandarin language has 4 spoken tones. We have attempted to re-create those above where after each syllable we tell you (1), (2), (3), or (4) as they correspond to each of the 4 tones. We encourage you to complement your Xianzai.com Chinese Idioms newsletter with a good offline study program.