The old fisherman rowed his small skiff into the river mist.
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Literary. Modern Chinese uses 小船 for 'small boat'; 扁舟 is mostly seen in classical poetry and is the canonical site of the rare 扁 reading. The everyday reading biǎn ('flat') does not apply here.
culture
The phrase 一叶扁舟 ('one leaf of a skiff') is a stock image in Tang and Song poetry — a lone traveler on water, smallness against vastness. Su Shi uses it in 《赤壁赋》.
