A Word is Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold

Characters:

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

Explanation: reference to a well-composed essay or poem with ingenious use of words

Tone: Neutral

The Story: Lu Buwei was a very powerful businessman at the end of the Warring States Period.

He also organized three thousand people to create a book named "Lu's Annals". He was very pleased with his great work 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, he himself would award the person 1000 gold pieces for each word changed. Lu Buwei was too powerful, and nobody had the guts to change his seemingly great writing.

Later people use this expression to describe a talented work, well-composed essays or a valuable speech.

Usage Example (Pinyin): Ta(1) de jiang(3) zuo(4) yi(1) zi(4) qian(1) jin(1), ni(3) yi(4) dang(1) qu(4) ting(1) ya.

Usage Example (English translation): "A word is worth a thousand pieces of gold" when he gives a lecture, so you must go!

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.