📖 Meaning
Refers to the skirts and fans used in dancing and singing, and by extension to singing and dancing entertainments themselves. It can also denote people who are skilled at singing and dancing. A close variant is the phrase 舞衫歌扇 (dance gown, song fan).
📜 Origin Story
This is a descriptive compound pairing 'dance skirt' with 'song fan' as parallel objects representing the accouterments of entertainment, rather than a phrase tied to a single historical anecdote. Such parallel pairings were a common rhetorical device in classical Chinese poetry and prose describing banquets, court life, and pleasure quarters. The closely related variant 舞衫歌扇 appears in Tang and Song dynasty verse. Together the two forms circulated through later literary descriptions of lavish song-and-dance gatherings.
💡 Example Usage
当年的歌楼里，舞裙歌扇，丝竹之声不绝。
In the music halls of those days, there were dance skirts and song fans, and the sound of strings and flutes never ceased.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 舞裙歌扇
- Pinyin: wǔ qún gē shàn
- Literal Translation: dance, skirt, song, fan
- Category: Lifestyle
- Characters: 4