Idiom Explanation:
write off at one stroke, to sketch with a pen on a written material to indicate that the matter is closed or cancelled. The metaphor is to cancel everything completely and leave everything alone.
Pronunciation:
一笔勾销
yī bǐ gōu xiāo
origin:
宋·朱熹《五朝名臣言行录》卷七：“公取班簿，视不才监司，每见一人姓名，一笔勾之。”
story:
During the Northern Song Dynasty, there was a man named Fan Zhongyan, with the word Xiwen, a native of Wu County (present-day Suzhou). He was born in a poor family and his father died when he was two years old. His mother, Xie, was forced to take him and remarry him to a family with the surname Zhu in Changshan County, Zizhou, Shandong Province, and from then on, Fan Zhongyan changed his name to Zhu Say. Since his mother brought him from Fan’s family, the position Fan Zhongyan occupied in the Zhu family is imaginable.
Fan Zhongyan studied hard and sought advice from learned people whenever he had the chance. As he grew older, he became more and more eager to build a career in a broader world. In 1011, Fan Zhongyan, at the age of 23, left his mother and went to the southern capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, Yingtian Prefecture (now Shangqiu, Henan Province), to study at the Yingtian Academy. During his studies, he wasted no time in studying day and night, and never wasted any time, and this was the case for several years in a row. Due to the increasing poverty, sometimes he could only eat one meal a day and never took off his clothes to have a comfortable sleep. Where there is a will, there is a way. Four years later, Fan Zhongyan was a high school scholar and soon became a counselor of the Guangde Army. He went home to bring his mother and restored his original name.
In the first year of Kangding of Song Emperor Renzong (1040 AD), the Western Xia invaded and the border was in danger. Fan Zhongyan volunteered to go to the border of Shaanxi and Gansu to take up the important task of defending against the invasion of Western Xia. Fan Zhongyan’s good management of the army and his love for his soldiers led to frequent victories in the battle against the Western Xia. From then on, the Western Xia did not dare to invade easily. Thanks to Fan Zhongyan’s efforts, the two sides formally negotiated peace. Because of his success in defending against the Western Xia, Fan was transferred back to the capital to take up the post of vice chancellor and began to make a great political development. He joined hands with Fu Bi and Ouyang Xiu to carry out reforms and began to implement the “New Deal”.
Fan Zhongyan was very strict in the evaluation and appointment of officials. He personally took the roster of officials from all over the world and checked their positions one by one, and was not merciful to those officials who did not work. When he found someone who was “in his position but not in his administration”, he removed his name from the roster and expelled him from the government, and selected some other more competent people to take up the post. He said, “It’s easy to take a person’s name off the rolls, but if you do, the person’s name will be taken off the rolls and the family will cry. Fan Zhongyan replied firmly, “It is better for the family to cry than for the thousands of families they have harmed to cry.”
