📖 Meaning
To abandon old customs and conventions in favor of new trends and ideas. It describes a deliberate choice to break from tradition and embrace innovation. The idiom conveys a progressive attitude toward social change and modernization.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom originates from the essay 'Paying New Year Visits' in Ye Shengtao's collection 'The Unwearied Collection: Hardship' (未厌集·苦辛), published during the early Republican era. Ye Shengtao, a prominent 20th-century Chinese writer and educator, questioned the significance of the traditional New Year greeting custom, calling it a superficial formality. He wrote that people collectively stopped paying New Year visits as a way of showing their intention to discard old customs and pursue new ways of thinking.
💡 Example Usage
年轻人应当避俗趋新，勇于接受新事物。
Young people should abandon old customs and embrace new ideas, having the courage to accept new things.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 避俗趋新
- Pinyin: bì sú qū xīn
- Literal Translation: avoid, customs, pursue, new
- Category: Attitude
- Characters: 4