落霞与孤鹜齐飞

落霞與孤鶩齊飛

luòxiáyǔgūwùqífēi

phrase

Meanings

1 the setting glow flies together with a lone wild duck
2 sunset clouds and a solitary duck rise as one — peak image of parallel prose

Characters

setting, falling

rosy cloud, sunset glow

together, in unison

Examples

滕王阁上眺望，落霞与孤鹜齐飞，秋水共长天一色。

Téngwáng Gé shàng tiàowàng, luò xiá yǔ gū wù qí fēi, qiū shuǐ gòng cháng tiān yī sè.

Gazing from the Tengwang Pavilion, the setting glow flies with the lone duck, and the autumn water meets the sky in one color.

摄影展里有一张照片，恰好是‘落霞与孤鹜齐飞’的意境。

Shèyǐng zhǎnlǐ yǒu yì zhāng zhàopiàn, qiàhǎo shì ‘luò xiá yǔ gū wù qí fēi’ de yìjìng.

One photo in the exhibition perfectly captured the feel of ‘the setting glow flying with the lone duck.’

Tips

history

From Wang Bo 王勃's 《滕王阁序》 (Tang): ‘落霞与孤鹜齐飞，秋水共长天一色。’ (The sunset glow flies with the lone wild duck; the autumn water shares one color with the long sky.) Composed at fifteen-to-twenty-something years old in a single sitting, it is the most celebrated parallel couplet in Chinese prose-poetry.

usage

鹜 (wù) = wild duck — commonly misread as wú. Always quoted with 秋水共长天一色.

Stroke Order

落 luò

霞 xiá

与 yǔ

孤 gū

鹜 wù

齐 qí

飞 fēi