📖 Meaning
To share the burden of hard work and fulfill one's duty to achieve results. It describes taking on laborious responsibilities actively and contributing to collective success. The phrase emphasizes diligence and a sense of shared responsibility.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase originates from a memorial submitted during the Qing dynasty by Duan Fang (端方), titled '请改定官制以为立宪预折' (A Memorial on Reforming the Official System as Preparation for Constitutionalism). In the memorial, Duan Fang criticized the bloated bureaucratic structure of the Qing government, where a single ministry could have two ministers, four vice-ministers, and additional supervising princes or grand secretaries—resulting in as many as seven chief officers for one department. He argued that such redundancy produced no effect of sharing labor and achieving results ('分劳赴功之效'), but only bred buck-passing and mutual obstruction ('推诿牵掣之能'). The idiom thus originally served as a critique of administrative inefficiency.
💡 Example Usage
在公司面临项目危机时，各部门主管主动分劳赴功，终于按期完成了任务。
When the company faced a project crisis, the department heads took the initiative to share the workload and fulfill their duties, ultimately completing the task on schedule.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 分劳赴功
- Pinyin: fēn láo fù gōng
- Literal Translation: share, toil, go to, merit
- Category: Leadership
- Characters: 4