📖 Meaning
Not having two meat dishes at a single meal. The idiom describes a person who eats frugally and lives a simple, austere life without extravagance in food. It is synonymous with the variant 食不兼肉.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase draws on the Confucian tradition of praising dietary restraint as a mark of virtue and self-discipline, echoing sentiments found in the Analects where sages ate simply and never sought abundance. Classical historians and moralists used this expression to characterize upright officials and gentlemen whose plain meals reflected their integrity and resistance to luxury. Over time it became a stock descriptor of frugality in biographical accounts of virtuous figures throughout Chinese antiquity.
💡 Example Usage
他一生清廉自守，食不重肉，深得百姓敬重。
Throughout his life he remained upright and self-disciplined, never eating two meat dishes at one meal, and won the deep respect of the common people.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 食不重肉
- Pinyin: shí bù zhóng ròu
- Literal Translation: eat, not, repeat, meat
- Category: Lifestyle
- Characters: 4