Welcome back to Listeners’ Garden on China Radio International. Now it is our idiom time. In today’s Chinese Idioms, we'll study Shǒu Zhū Dài Tù, meaning "to sit by a stump waiting for hares".

Long, long ago, on a hot summer day, a farmer was weeding a field with a hoe. Suddenly a hare scurried by and bumped into the trunk of a tree. The poor animal broke his neck and died instantly.

The farmer stopped hoeing and picked up the dead hare. He was overjoyed at the unexpected gain. He took the hare back home, cooked it and had a nice dinner.

As he ate his supper, he thought to himself, "How wonderful! Game comes to me so easily! I'm tired of farming in the hot sun. I have to work hard until autumn before I can reap the crops. Back-breaking work, humph! Why don't I just sit under the tree and wait for more hares to run into the trunk!"

The next day, the farmer threw his hoe into the storeroom and went back to the field. He sat under the tree, indulging himself in the fantasy that he would get another hare. He waited and waited. "Where on earth are the hares?"

But his patience did not help. Many days passed but nothing happened. No more hares ran into the trunk.

His field was soon overgrown with weeds. Who knows what he would live on next year if he kept sitting by the tree and doing nothing else!