Falling After Sun Shan

Characters:

Pronunciation: ming (2) luo(4) sun(1) shan(1)

Explanation: Describe a failure in an examination or contest.

The Story: In the Song Dynasty, there was a scholar named Sun Shan in Suzhou. He was humorous and people called him a Humorous Scholar. One year, Sun Shan went to take the imperial civil examination with the son of one of his friends. When the list of the successful candidates was published, Sun Shan found the man's son was not in the list while his name was at the end of the list. On arriving home, the friend asked Sun Shan if his son passed the exam. Sun Shan told him two lines of improvisational verse: "Sun Shan is at the end of the list. And your son is behind Sun Shan". The man knew his son did not pass the exam and then left sorrowfully.

Usage Example (Pinyin): Sui(1) ran(2) ming(2) luo(4) sun(1) shan(1), ta(1) bing(4) mei(2) you(3) sang(4) shi(1) xin(4) xin(1).

Usage Example (English translation): He did not lose his confidence, even though the exam made him 'fall after Sun Shan'.

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.