击鼓传花

擊鼓傳花

jīgǔchuánhuā

idiom

Meanings

1 beat the drum, pass the flower (a traditional party game in which players sit in a circle passing a flower around while a drum beats; whoever holds the flower when the drum stops must perform a forfeit)
2 (figurative) hot-potato situation — passing risk or responsibility along until someone is left holding it

Characters

Examples

晚会上我们玩击鼓传花，谁拿到花就要表演节目。

Wǎnhuì shàng wǒmen wán jīgǔ-chuánhuā, shéi nádào huā jiùyào biǎoyǎn jiémù.

At the party we played pass-the-parcel; whoever ended up with the flower had to perform.

这种高估值的股票就像击鼓传花，最后一棒要小心。

Zhè zhǒng gāo gūzhí de gǔpiào jiù xiàng jīgǔ-chuánhuā, zuìhòu yī bàng yào xiǎoxīn.

Wildly overvalued stocks are a hot-potato game — watch out for the last one holding the bag.

Tips

history

The game traces back to Tang-Song banquet entertainments and shows up famously in 《红楼梦》 (Dream of the Red Chamber) chapter 54, where the Jia family plays it during the Lantern Festival — whoever the drumbeat stops on must drink wine and tell a joke. The figurative finance use ('passing the bubble until someone is left holding it') has become extremely common in business writing about speculative manias.

culture

Modern equivalents: at family gatherings the drum is now usually a phone playing music (音乐停 'stop the music' rather than 鼓停); the forfeit is performing a song, downing a drink, or doing a dare. 最后一棒 (zuìhòu yī bàng, 'the last baton') is the stock phrase for whoever gets stuck.

Stroke Order

击 jī

鼓 gǔ

传 chuán

花 huā