Niánqīng shí yào gǎnyú dào zhōngliú jī shuǐ, bùpà fēnglàng.
When you are young you should dare to swim out into the current, unafraid of the waves.
Tips
history
From Mao Zedong's 1925 poem 《沁园春·长沙》: 曾记否，到中流击水，浪遏飞舟 - 'Do you still remember how we swam out into midstream, the waves stopping the flying boats?' Written of his student days swimming in the Xiang River; the line is now stock rhetoric for boldness in the face of generational challenges.
usage
击水 here means 'to beat the water' in the sense of swimming, not striking it. 中流 is the midstream - the deepest, fastest part of the river - and the phrase is almost always used metaphorically for taking on the hardest part of a task.
