📖 Meaning
An old officialdom term for a meager, hardship post—a thankless office with a slim salary and no chance of graft or perquisites. It paints the assignment as cold and unrewarding as handling ice. Used to describe a poor, hard bureaucratic appointment.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase arose in the jargon of the old Chinese bureaucracy, where posts were informally ranked by how much income and advantage they brought the holder. A "报冰公事" was the opposite of a lucrative appointment: the work was cold, lean, and brought in nothing extra, much like reporting on a block of ice. No specific literary source or anecdote is recorded for it; it circulated as colloquial office talk about which positions were worth having. Its written currency is now largely confined to dictionaries and old novels describing official life.
💡 Example Usage
他在县衙当了十年文书，做的尽是报冰公事，从未沾过半点油水。
He served ten years as a clerk in the county yamen, doing nothing but meager, thankless work, and never touched a trace of graft.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 报冰公事
- Pinyin: bào bīng gōng shì
- Literal Translation: report, ice, public, affairs
- Category: Condition
- Characters: 4