欲与天公试比高

欲與天公試比高
yù yǔ tiāngōng shì bǐ gāo
quotation

Meanings

  1. 1 wishing to contest the heavens in height
  2. 2 a soaring, heroic ambition that rivals the skies
  3. 3 (lit.) wanting to try measuring heights with the Lord of Heaven

Examples

Tā niánshào háo qíng, yùyǔtiāngōngshìbǐgāo, lìzhì gǎibiàn jiāxiāng.
In his youthful fervor, daring to measure himself against the heavens, he vowed to transform his hometown.
Zhè zuò mótiān dàlóu bá dì ér qǐ, fǎngfú yùyǔtiāngōngshìbǐgāo.
The skyscraper rises from the ground as if to contest the heavens in height.

Tips

history
From Mao Zedong's (毛泽东) 《·》(1936): 。(Mountains dance like silver serpents; the plains drive wax elephants — all wanting to measure heights with Heaven.) Mao surveys the snowbound Shaanxi landscape and projects his own ambition onto it. One of the most famous lines of 20th-century Chinese poetry.
usage
= 'Lord of Heaven' (老爷), a personification of the sky. The phrase carries bold, sometimes arrogant ambition — fitting for revolutionary rhetoric or describing tall skylines.

Stroke Order

tiān
gōng
shì
gāo