📖 Meaning
A door made of mulberry branches and a door pivot carved from a plain wooden bar. The idiom depicts a dwelling so crude and shabby that it signals extreme poverty and humble living conditions. It is typically used to describe a person or household that is poor but often holds themselves in high regard or lives contentedly despite destitution.
📜 Origin Story
The specific origin of this idiom is not recorded in any surviving classical text. It follows a well-established pattern in Chinese that evokes poverty through humble building materials, namely a door of mulberry twigs and a pivot of rough wood. Comparable expressions such as 瓮牖绳枢 ('jar window, rope pivot') appear in Jia Yi's essay Guo Qin Lun (过秦论) of the Western Han dynasty, and 桑枢瓮牖 ('mulberry pivot, jar window') is used elsewhere to describe the simple dwellings of impoverished sages like Yan Hui. By the same rhetorical logic, 桑户桊枢 paints the image of a destitute household that often remains unfazed, even noble, in its simplicity.
💡 Example Usage
他虽居桑户桊枢，却心系天下，矢志不渝。
Although he lived in a crude hut of mulberry branches, he still kept the whole world in his heart and never wavered in his ambitions.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 桑户桊枢
- Pinyin: sāng hù juàn shū
- Literal Translation: mulberry, door, wooden bar, pivot
- Category: Condition
- Characters: 4