📖 Meaning
Describes a scene where the former palace grounds have become farmland overgrown with grain and millet. It is used to depict the desolate, ruined appearance of a fallen nation or dynasty. The image conveys deep sorrow over the decline and loss of a once-glorious capital.
📜 Origin Story
The allusion traces back to the fall of the Western Zhou dynasty, when the Zhou capital Hao (宗周) was abandoned after the royal court was forced eastward. According to the 'Shijing' (Book of Songs), a Zhou official traveling through the old capital saw the former ancestral temples and palaces overgrown with grain and millet, and wrote the poem 'Shu Li' (黍离) lamenting the ruins. A related tradition tells of Jizi, a survivor of the conquered Shang dynasty, who composed the 'Maixiu' song upon seeing the former Shang capital reduced to wheat fields. The idiom proper is cited from the late Qing novel 'Tong Shi' (痛史) by Wu Jianren, in chapter 17, where the narrator, traveling through a land of national ruin, remarks that all he sees feels changed and he cannot bear the feeling of millet growing over the old palace.
💡 Example Usage
故地重游，只见禾黍故宫，令人不胜今昔之感。
Visiting the old site again, one sees only millet growing over the former palace, filling one with unbearable sorrow at the contrast between past and present.
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🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 禾黍故宫
- Pinyin: hé shǔ gù gōng
- Literal Translation: grain, millet, old palace
- Category: Condition
- Characters: 4