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学成语俗语 

话贵州今昔

A Story of Guizhou Past and Present Reflected in Idioms

（本文转载自《孔子学院》中英双语版（贵州刊）2023年第3期/总第79期）

汉语中有两个广为人知的成语：“夜郎自大”和“黔驴技穷”。这里的“夜郎”和“黔”指的都是中国西南的一个省份——贵州。

There are two widely used idioms in Chinese: yelang-zida (as conceited as Yelang) and qianlv-jiqiong (at one’s wit’s end like a newly-arrived donkey in Qian). Here both yelang and qian refer to a southwestern province in China, the Guizhou Province.

夜郎自大 / yelang-zida

汉朝初期，西南的夜郎国（今贵州西部）占地比较大，国王以为他的国家全天下最大。他见到汉武帝派来的使臣便问：“汉朝和夜郎哪个大？”这个典故被著名史学家司马迁记入《史记》，“夜郎”从此家喻户晓，成了“不自量力，妄自尊大”的代名词。人们嘲笑夜郎作为偏居一隅的小国，是井底之蛙。

In the early Han Dynasty, the Kingdom of Yelang in the southwestern region of China (the west part of today’s Guizhou Province) controlled a large territory, so that the king believed his kingdom the largest in the world. He asked the ambassador sent by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty: “Han and Yelang, which is the larger kingdom?” This story was recorded in the Records of History by the renowned historian Sima Qian, and since then “Yelang” has become a household epithet for those who “do not know their own capacities and are ridiculously conceited”. As a relatively small kingdom lying in the remote corner of the continent, Yelang is mocked for its distorted sense of self-importance.

但根据考证，夜郎国作为中国西南地区第一个由少数民族建立的国家，史籍记载的历史就有 300 多年，领土涉及今天的云南、贵州等地。夜郎人善于进行对外贸易，国家和百姓算得上富庶，其实力不容小觑。

However, according to historical research, as the first kingdom established by ethnic minorities in southwestern China, Yelang had a recorded history of over three hundred years and possessed a territory covering today’s Yunnan and Guizhou provinces. Yelang people were good at trading with other regions and the kingdom and its people enjoyed considerable affluence. Therefore, Yelang as a kingdom was not at all a small power.

现在的贵州早已不似夜郎国时那样闭塞，四通八达的水陆交通网已经使贵州成为中国西南地区的交通枢纽，成为长江经济带的重要组成部分。十多个国内和国际机场把贵州和全国乃至世界相连。贵州在电讯领域已经成为全国的“领头羊”，贵州的科研工作者跨越莽莽群山，利用“中国天眼”展望世界，甚至探索宇宙的奥秘。

Today’s Guizhou Province is no longer geographically isolated as Yelang. Now, the well connected water and land transportation network has made Guizhou the transportation hub of southwest China and an important part of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Over a dozen domestic and international airports connect Guizhou to the other parts of China and the world. Guizhou also ranks among the top players in the field of telecommunications in China. Scientific researchers in Guizhou are using “China’s Tianyan”, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) to look across the mountains in Guizhou into the world and to explore the mysteries of the cosmos.

黔驴技穷 / qianlv-jiqiong

“黔驴技穷”的典故出自唐朝文学家柳宗元的 《三戒·黔之驴》。故事讲的是，一头毛驴被带到黔地（今贵州），放到山脚吃草。山上的老虎发现了这个从没有见过的怪物，开始只是远远观望，然后慢慢靠近试探，最后发现毛驴除了大叫或尥蹶子没有其他本事，于是就把驴子吃掉了。人们用这个成语指“仅有的一点本领都用完，已无计可施”之意。现在，我们还是聊聊贵州省的简称为什么是“黔”吧！

The idiom qianlv-jiqiong originates from the story “A Donkey Comes to Qian” collected in the Tang-dynasty writer Liu Zongyuan’s Three Parables. In this story, a donkey was brought to the area of Qian (today’s Guizhou). While it was grazing at the foot of a hill, a tiger from the hill discovered it. Never having seen such a strangelooking animal, the tiger initially only dared to observe it from afar. When the tiger had come closer to the donkey step by step, it realized that the donkey’s tricks were no more than braying and kicking. Then the tiger ate the donkey. Today, people use the idiom to describe a situation where one has exhausted one’s abilities and can do nothing more. Now let’s look at how “Qian” has become a synonym for the Guizhou Province!

在汉语中，“黔”是一个形声字，形旁“黑” 指“黑色头巾”，声旁“今”意为“当面的”，“黔”表示“带黑头巾出门见人”。东汉著名文字学家许慎在《说文解字》中解释：“黔，黎也。秦谓民为黔首， 同谓之黎民。” 就是说，秦朝把老百姓称为“黔首”或“黎民”。秦王朝一统天下，在贵州设立黔中郡，不仅要从行政上控制此地，更要从思想上让南方的山民意识到自己是秦国的百姓。后世延续了这个称呼， “黔”字就成了贵州的代称。

In Chinese, 黔 is a “shape-and-sound” character, or a pictophonetic character. The semantic element 黑 means “black headscarf ”, while the phonetic element 今 means “face to face”. So together 黔 means “going out to meet people with a black headscarf on”. The famous philologist Xu Shen from the Eastern Han Dynasty explains thus in his dictionary Shuowen Jiezi: “Qian means the mass. The Qin Dynasty rulers called people qianshou, or ‘the black-headscarfed’, which is another way to say limin, ‘the common people’.” In other words, the Qin Dynasty rulers called their subjects qianshou or limin. After the first emperor of Qin had unified China, he set up the Qianzhong county in today’s Guizhou, not only to control this region administratively, but also to inculcate in the mind of these southern mountainous people a sense of being the subjects of the Qin empire. The epithet was passed down to later generations and “Qian” since then has become the synonym for Guizhou.

虽然贵州省群山环抱，有些地方经济相对落后，但贵州人并不保守。以人口占比最大的苗族为例，他们佩戴的头饰多是纯银打造，高调张扬。他们的服饰色彩艳丽，织、绣、挑、染工艺繁复，服饰图案更具有丰富的文化内涵，有表意和识别族类、支系及语言的重要作用。

Enclosed by mountains, some places in Guizhou are relatively economically less developed, yet Guizhou people are by no means conservative. For example, the Miao people, the largest population group in Guizhou, love to wear flamboyant ornamental headgears made of pure silver. Their ethnic clothing features daring colors and elaborate weaving, embroidery, lining and dyeing techniques. The patterns on these clothes also contain rich cultural meanings and function as elaborate signs to convey meaning or to identify one’s ethnic groups, subgroups and languages.

贵州地处中国西南，境内多高原、山地和丘陵，素有“八山一水一分田”之说，是中国平原极少的省份。但贵州并不贫瘠，除了神奇的自然景观、浓郁的民族风情等旅游资源吸引着国内外游人，其独特的地形地貌和气候更孕育了丰富的野生动植物资源。贵州是全国四大中药材产区之一，有药用植物资源4 000多种，占全国中草药品种的80%，故有“夜郎无闲草，黔地多良药”的说法。

Guizhou is located in the southwest of China and a great proportion of it consists of plateaus, mountains and hills, therefore there is the saying “for each arable land there are one river and eight mountains” to describe the scarcity of flatlands in Guizhou. Yet Guizhou is far from a land of scarcity. Its breathtaking natural landscape and colorful ethnic culture attract tourists from home and abroad. Moreover, its unique topographical features and climate cultivate a wealth of wildlife resources Guizhou is one of the four major Chinese herbal medicine production areas and is home to over four thousand types of plants used for medicine, accounting for 80% of the medicinal herbs produced in China. Therefore, it is said that “there is no idle grass in Yelang, and many good medicines can be found in Qian”.

朋友们，来贵州吧！感受黔地的无限风情，领略“夜郎”的巨大变化！

Welcome to Guizhou to have a taste of the poignant local culture and witness the great changes of “Yelang”!

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