📖 Meaning
The moon is bright and the stars are few. It describes a clear, cloudless night sky in which brilliant moonlight outshines the surrounding stars. It is often used to evoke a peaceful, luminous night scene and can also suggest clarity and openness.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase is best known from the modern Chinese short story 《七根火柴》 by 王愿坚, which follows Red Army soldiers crossing the grasslands during the Long March. In the story the grassland's weather is famously unpredictable: a fine night of bright moon and sparse stars can, with a single gust of wind, be swallowed by clouds rising as if from the ground, followed at once by a torrential downpour. The idiom thus comes to us as a literary description of a deceptively calm, clear night that may quickly turn hostile. It is also echoed in older poetic imagery of a moonlit sky, but 《七根火柴》 is its most widely cited written source.
💡 Example Usage
中秋之夜，月朗星稀，一家人围坐在院子里赏月谈心。
On Mid-Autumn night the moon was bright and the stars sparse, as the whole family sat together in the courtyard, admiring the moon and chatting.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 月朗星稀
- Pinyin: yuè lǎng xīng xī
- Literal Translation: moon, bright, stars, sparse
- Category: Clarity
- Characters: 4