青梅竹马
- Literal
- green plums, bamboo horse
- Figurative
- A boy and a girl who were childhood playmates, especially if they later become a couple; also that childhood bond itself.
Where does 青梅竹马 come from?
It comes from Li Bai's Tang-dynasty poem 《长干行》. The speaker is a young woman from Changgan, a quarter of Jinling, today's Nanjing, married to a merchant who is away. She remembers their childhood: he would come riding a bamboo hobbyhorse, and the two of them played with green plums, neighbors with no suspicion between them. Then she tells of their wedding, at fourteen, and the waiting. The idiom grew out of those images of play, and a line from the same passage gave us 两小无猜. Today it is said of a couple who have known each other since childhood, or of two childhood friends.
Source (出处): 李白《长干行》
How is 青梅竹马 used? Two examples
- 他们俩是青梅竹马，从幼儿园就认识了。
Those two grew up together; they've known each other since kindergarten.
- 这部剧讲的是一对青梅竹马长大后在同一家公司重逢的故事。
The show is about two childhood sweethearts who meet again as adults at the same company.
In Wanyu, all 400 chengyu have audio on every sentence, and you can save them to your decks and review them with spaced repetition. Free.
