📖 Meaning
It describes spending the night by the water and traveling over the mountains by day. The idiom portrays the hardships of a long and arduous journey across difficult terrain.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom has no single authoritative textual source recorded in standard dictionaries; it is a parallel compound built from natural pairs of travel hardships common in classical Chinese literature. Similar imagery appears throughout Tang and Song travel poetry and official dispatch records describing long journeys. The phrase evokes the rhythm of a traveler's life—resting near water at night and crossing mountains by day. It belongs to a family of classical idioms depicting wearying travel.
💡 Example Usage
考察队一路水宿山行，历时数月才抵达目的地。
The expedition traveled by water and over mountains for months before finally reaching their destination.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 水宿山行
- Pinyin: shuǐ xiǔ shān xíng
- Literal Translation: water, lodge overnight, mountain, travel
- Category: Distance
- Characters: 4