📖 Meaning
A metaphor for unfulfilled ambition, lying dormant while biding one's time for the right opportunity. Like a turtle used to prop up a bed and left for decades, one endures in stillness waiting for the moment to act.
📜 Origin Story
Recorded in the 'Treatise on Tortoises and Divination' (龟策列传) appended to Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian (史记), with commentary by the Han dynasty scholar Chu Shaosun. It recounts how an old man in the south used a live turtle to prop up one leg of his bed. After more than twenty years, the old man died; when the bed was finally moved, the turtle was still alive. The story came to symbolize patient endurance through long, dormant years while awaiting one's chance.
💡 Example Usage
他蛰居乡野多年，龟冷支床，只待时机一到便重新出山。
For years he lived in seclusion in the countryside, biding his time like a turtle propping up a bed, waiting only for the right moment to re-emerge.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 龟冷支床
- Pinyin: guī lěng zhī chuáng
- Literal Translation: turtle, cold, prop up, bed
- Category: Perseverance
- Characters: 4