欣欣向荣 (Xīn xīn xiàng róng)
Growing luxuriantly
Tao Yuanming(365 or 372 or 376-427, sources vary), a famous poet of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, is known and loved particularly for his pastoral poems. He could have had many chances to gain official promotions during his lifetime, but he recognized official society as corrupt and evil. Tao had once served as a county magistrate. But he was disgusted by the corrupt practices of the other officials and quit the job after only eight days. He moved to the countryside to live in seclusion. Soon afterward he wrote a poem to express the joys he discovered in his hometown and his peaceful seclusion. One passage translates roughly like this:
My fellow farmers told me spring was coming,
And they were going to till the land to the west of the village,
They went by cart or by boat, passing deep valleys or streams winding through hills.
Trees and plants were grown luxuriantly,
And spring water gently flowed.
We are so happy and joyful here,
For on this beautiful awakened land,
Everything is blooming.
You can see clearly that the poet was very delighted with bucolic life. The poem also expresses his love for the beauty of nature. What’s more, this fresh air he breathed formed a sharp contrast to the stuffy atmosphere of the rotten official circles he had once worked in.
From Tao Yuanming’s line “Trees and plants are growing luxuriantly” comes the idiom 欣欣向荣 (Xīn xīn xiàng róng). The idiom is often used metaphorically to describe a flourishing business or a vigorously developing cause. In that case, it can be translated as “flourishing”, “prosperous” or “Prosper and thrive”. When it’s used to describe people, you can interpret it as “having one’s star on the rise”.
(Source: english.cri.cn)
