Drill a small hole in the wall and borrow the light from the neighboring house to study. Describe the persistence of hard study despite the difficult conditions.
Idiom Pronunciation:
凿壁偷光
záo bì tōu guāng
Origin book:
《西京杂记》卷二：“匡衡字稚圭，勤学而无烛，邻舍有烛而不逮。衡乃穿壁引其光，以书映光而读之。”
Origin Story:
During the Western Han Dynasty in China, there was a poor farmer’s child named Kuang Heng. When he was a child, he wanted to study very much, but because his family was really poor, they couldn’t afford to go to the school to study. Later, he learned to read from a relative, and only then did he have the ability to read books. Kuangheng could not afford to buy books, so he had to borrow books to read. In those days, books were very expensive and those who had them refused to lend them to others easily. During the busy season, he worked for a rich family as a short-time worker, asking them to lend him books for no money.
After a few years, he grew up and became the main laborer of the family. He worked in the field all day long and only had a short time to read during his lunch break, so it often took him ten days and a half months to finish reading a volume. Kuang Heng was very anxious and thought to himself, “I don’t have time to read during the day when I am working in the crops, so I can use more time to read at night. However, his family was so poor that they could not afford to buy oil to light the lamps, so what should they do?
One night, Kuang Heng was lying in bed, reciting the book he had read during the day. As he was doing so, he suddenly saw a bright light coming from the east wall. He stood up and went to the wall to take a look. It turned out that the light coming through the crack was the neighbor’s light. So, Kuang Heng thought of a way: he took a knife and dug the wall gap a little bigger. He took a knife and dug the crack in the wall bigger, so that the light coming through was also bigger, and he read his book with the light coming through.
In this way, Kuang Heng studied hard and later became a very learned man, and even became a prime minister.
Similar Idioms:
- 囊萤映雪
- 焚膏继晷
