Chinese Idiom Story #2 画龙点睛

In this series of Chinese idiom short stories

we’ll be introducing Chinese idioms that have a long-standing history in ancient China but are still in use today. A background story of the idiom will be provided, along with sample sentence(s) to give you an idea of how to use them. Today we will learn the idiom - 画龙点睛(hua4 long2 dian3 jing1, adding several elements in the key part of an artwork or writing will enhance the whole).

General Meaning

Let’s break down the idiom and understand one character by one character:

• 画(hua4, draw)

• 龙(long2, dragon)

• 点(dian3, decorate)

• 睛(jing1, eye)

This idiom means "cover your ears and steal the bell", we often use this idiom to describe the behaviour of lying to yourself. Why is it so? Let’s take a look at its background story!

Background Story

During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there was a famous painter named Zhang Sengyao (张僧繇, Zhang1 Seng1 Yao2). He was very good at painting (画画, hua4 hua4). His paintings were vivid(生动, sheng1 dong4) and true to life.

One year, Zhang painted four dragons (龙, long2) on the wall in the Le, a Temple in Jinling. All of them were absolutely lifelike, attracting (吸引, xi1 yin3) many sightseers (观光客, guan1 guang1 ke4).

All of a sudden (突然, tu1 ran2), someone noticed a defect in them, saying, “Look, these dragons have no eyes (眼睛, yan3 jing0).” The other people now looked at them more carefully and indeed saw that the eyes had not been painted on them.

Then they found Zhang Sengyao and said, “You have not finished your paintings and why do the dragons have no eyes?”

“I cannot do that. If I draw the eyes, the dragons will fly off the wall,” Zhang replied. They laughed and felt that he talked nonsense (胡说, hu2 shuo1). Someone said, “You are just talking big. How can painted dragons fly away? Draw eyes on them and let us see whether they can fly away.”

The onlookers insisted that he should add eyes to the dragons. Urged on by the crowd, Zhang added eyes to two of the dragons.

As soon as he finished, the sky became overcast (阴, yin1), and there was thunder (雷, lei2) and lightning (闪电, shan3 dian4). Accompanied by the thunder and lightning, the two dragons started to move and soon flew up into the sky (天空, tian1 kong1). The people were too scared (害怕, hai4 pa2) to ask him to add eyes to the remaining two dragons. Therefore, only two dragons are still to be seen on the wall of the Le Temple.

This idiom is now used in the context where when people are writing an essay or painting an artwork, adding several words or strokes in the key part will enhance the whole. Doing so, can make artwork or writing more lively and vivid.

Sample Sentence(s)

• 如果你在作文里用了成语，这会有画龙点睛的效果。

  ru2 guo3 ni3 zai4 zuo4 wen2 li3 yong4 le0 cheng2 yu3,

  zhe4 hui4 you3 hua4 long2 dian3 jing1 de0 xiao4 guo3.

  If you use Chinese idioms in your essay writing, this will add a finishing touch to your work.

Hope that this post will help you better understand the meaning and the context of using this idiom. Stay tuned to our blog for more Chinese idiom learning posts. Do send us an email if you are interested to learn Mandarin Chinese in Singapore! See you in the next post.