Idiom Explanation:
Just open the book and read it, you will learn something helpful.
Pronunciation:
开卷有益
kāi juàn yǒu yì
Origin:
晋朝·陶潜《与子俨等疏》：开卷有得，便欣然忘食。
Story:
At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, in order to promote traditional culture, Emperor Taizong Zhao Guangyi ordered fourteen ministers to compile a large-scale classification encyclopedia called Taiping General Classification. This book collected and excerpted the important contents of more than 1,600 ancient books, classified into fifty-five disciplines, with a total of 1,000 volumes, which is a valuable reference book
This book was compiled in the year of Song Taiping Xingguo, so it was named “Taiping General Category”. For such a huge book, Song Taizong set himself to read at least two or three volumes every day, and finish them all within a year, so the name was later changed to “Taiping Imperial Survey”. When Song Taizong made up his mind to spend energy on reading this great work, someone thought that it was too hard for the emperor to deal with so many state affairs and read such a big book every day, so he was advised to read less, not necessarily every day, so as not to overwork his mind, which was not good for the health of the dragon. However, Song Taizong replied, “I like reading very much, and I can often get pleasure from books, so it is always beneficial to read more books, not to mention that I do not feel distracted.”
In this way, Song Taizong still insisted on reading three volumes every day, and sometimes when he was delayed due to busy state affairs, he also took time to make up for it, and often said to people around him, “If you open the books, there will always be benefits.”
Because Emperor Taizong read three volumes of Taiping Yilan every day, he became very knowledgeable and was able to deal with state affairs like a fish in water. At that time, the ministers saw the emperor so diligent in reading, also have to study hard, so then very popular reading culture, even usually do not read the prime minister, also tirelessly read the “Analects”, there are “half of the Analects of the world”. Later, the idiom of “opening a book is beneficial” became an idiom to describe that as long as you open a book and read, there are always benefits.
