 A: Welcome to Chinese Idioms.
B: Today to start with, we'll learn the idiom 画龙点睛Huà Lóng Diǎn Jīng, or "to add eyes to the picture of a dragon to bring it to life."
A: When we write scripts for our broadcasts, we expect our foreign experts in the office to take a look at them. They may alter some phrases or add a few new words in order to make the scripts sound much better. In English, you may refer to this practice as "putting the finishing touches" to the script. How about in Chinese?
B: There's a wonderful expression for this in Chinese. If you wish to express your appreciation for a well edited script, you could say, "This is just the right word. I like it. It's just like adding the eyes to the picture of a dragon." This is the Chinese idiom—Huà Lóng Diǎn Jīng.
A: Yes, Huà Lóng Diǎn Jīng. When you draw a dragon, you add eyes to it to bring it to life. What's the story behind Huà Lóng Diǎn Jīng? Let's hear more from Shanshan.
Shanshan:
Legend has it that during the Northern and Southern Dynasties about 1,500 years ago, there was a famous painter named Zhang.
He was good at painting people, animals, landscapes and the Buddha. His paintings were vivid and true to life. People said that the animals he drew could jump out of the picture as soon as he gave them the finishing touches. To make sure, a large group of people gathered in a temple one day to watch Zhang paint dragons.
Zhang painted four dragons on the wall. All of them were lifelike, but didn't have eyes. The onlookers were puzzled and asked him why.
"If I draw the eyes, the dragons will fly off the wall." Zhang replied.
"He's just talking big!" some people thought.
Half-believing and half-doubting, the onlookers insisted that he add eyes to the dragons.
Urged on by the crowd, Zhang added eyes to two of the dragons.
In the twinkling of an eye, it turned dark and began raining hard. (Thunder) Accompanied by thunder and lightning, the two dragons started to move and soon flew into the sky. The two other dragons without eyes remained on the wall.
A: So you see just how important those eyes are to a dragon!
B: This story is quite obviously not true, but the painter was definitely real. People made up that story to express their admiration for him.
A: From that story, the idiom Huà Lóng Diǎn Jīng 画龙点睛 developed to describe the one or two illuminating phrases in a speech or article that make the whole piece more apt and more to the point.
B: You can also use it in a broader sense, when you want to say "add the final touch" to something or put the icing on a cake.
A: So remember Huà Lóng Diǎn Jīng 画龙点睛, adding the eyes to the picture of a dragon.
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