📖 Meaning
After death, only green flies come to pay mournful visits. It is a metaphor for someone who had no true friends or confidants in life, so lonely that not a single person would attend their funeral. The idiom conveys a profound sense of isolation and the tragic consequence of alienating others.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom originates from the Biography of Yu Fan in the Records of the Three Kingdoms (三国志·吴书·虞翻传), as annotated by Pei Songzhi quoting the Biography of Yu Fan (虞翻别传). Yu Fan was a brilliant but blunt scholar-official of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period. Because of his uncompromising nature and tendency to offend his superiors, he was exiled to a remote coastal region. In his self-lament, he wrote that in life he had no one to converse with, and feared that in death only green flies would serve as his mourners.
💡 Example Usage
他一生孤傲自持，不与人交，临终时不禁感叹自己恐怕要青蝇吊客了。
He was proud and aloof all his life, befriending no one; on his deathbed he could not help lamenting that he would likely have only green flies as mourners.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 青蝇吊客
- Pinyin: qīng yíng diào kè
- Literal Translation: green fly, mourn, guest
- Category: Condition
- Characters: 4