Story Behind the Idiom: Yi Pu Shi Han

This short tale addresses the background story behind the Chinese idiom 一暴十寒, which literally translates to “One day of sun, ten days of frost”, and which means “to bust butt for a little while and then get lazy”, or “to only work for a short time and then fail”. The story below really applies to the latter meaning. Though this is categorized as advanced, upper-intermediate readers could surely tackle this.
Easy and Difficult Chinese Idioms for Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced StudentsThis story is a little odd, because the idiom 一暴十寒 means “ONE day of sun, TEN days of frost”, but the story references TEN days of sun and TEN days of frost – “one day of sun” is never mentioned. Which calls the whole “story behind the idiom” thing into question. Surely, some of the stories are truly historical, and have stayed with the Chinese people over several thousand years. Some are probably very very recent.
Now, I spent a summer as an editor assistant in an educational publishing house in Beijing, and I can tell you a lot of these “historical stories” (when they’re used as language exercises, anyway) are just kind of made up to fit the word count needed.
I was recently reading “Taoism: The Parting of the Way” by Holmes Welch, and he mentions an interesting phenomenon in Chinese scholarly history: several thousand years ago, some Chinese scholars or philosophers who wanted to get their ideas widely disseminated would write a book, then put the name of a dead but well-respected philosopher on it, and claim they had found a lost work by the other philosopher. Very clever, but it does confuse the historical record a bit.
These types of stories should be treated similarly – in many cases it’s impossible to tell wher they came from. Sometimes there is a real historical tie-in to an old text, sometimes it’s all apocryphal – basically an urban legend. So, who knows if this idiom what made up my Mencius, made up by a scholar pretending to be Mencius, or made up by a school teacher to help students remember the text – either way, it’s a nice (and short) little blurb.
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战国 – zhàn guó – Warring States Period (around 475 BC to 221 BC)
孟轲 – mèng kē – Mencius’ full name
孟子 – mèng zi – Mencius’ common name
善于 – shàn yù – To be good at
指责 – zhǐ zé – Point the finger, criticize
阴冷 – yīn lěng – Gloomy and cold
生命力- shēn mìng lì – Vitality
少之甚少 – shǎo zhī shén shǎo – Less and less
战国时，有个叫孟轲的人，大家称他为孟子。孟子善于通过打比方来发表议论。
当时，有人指责孟子不尽力帮助齐王。孟子便解释说:“比如说，天下有些易活的植物，假如把它放在太阳下晒十天，然后再把它放在阴冷的地方冻十天，即使是生命力再强的植物也会死。我见到齐王的机会少之甚少，即使给了他些良好的影响与帮助，我一离开，一些和我主张不同的人，又带给他许多不好影响。我怎么能使齐王的思想、品质好起来呢？”
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During the Warring States Period, there was a man named Meng Ke [Mencius], who everyone called MengZi. Menzi was very good at creating analogies to foster discussion.　
At that time, there was a person who criticized Mencius for not trying harder to help the King of Qi. Mencius explained plainly, saying, “Take this as an example: there are some plants that live well on this earth [lit: under heaven], but if you take them and put them in the sun to dry for ten days, then you take them and put them in the gloom and cold to freeze for ten days, even if their vitality is strong they’re still going to die. My opportunities to see the King of Qi have been less and less, so even if I gave him some good influence and help, as soon as I leave, some people that don’t advocate the same things I do will influence him negatively. [That being the case,] how can I improve the quality of the King of Qi’s thinking?”