Chinese Idiom: 大材小用 (Da Cai Xiao Yong)
English Translation: Underutilizing Talent
pīn yīn: dà cái xiǎo yòng
Idiom Meaning: This idiom means misusing or inappropriately employing a person, leading to a waste of their talents.
Historical Source: Southern Song Dynasty, Lu You’s poem “Sending Xinyouan to the Court.”
Idiom Story:
This idiom originated from a poem by Lu You, a renowned patriotic poet of the Southern Song Dynasty. Lu You, in his later years, wrote a poem “To My Sons,” expressing his deep regret for not witnessing the reunification of his country before his death. The poem reflects his unwavering patriotism and his lifelong desire to see the reunification of the country.
Lu You lived during a time when national and social conflicts were exceptionally sharp in the Southern Song Dynasty. The survival of the country and the safety of the nation were always on his mind. In his middle age, Lu You proposed numerous strategies to the court for resisting the Jurchen Jin invaders and restoring the lost northern territories. However, the Southern Song rulers, content with their limited hold on the southern part of China, ignored these proposals. Despite his unfulfilled ambitions, Lu You’s patriotic fervor never waned. Even in his old age, he remained concerned about his country and people, willing to endure hardships in pursuit of his dream to restore the lost territories and unify the nation.
In the early years of Emperor Ningzong’s reign, around 1204 AD, Lu You, then over eighty years old, lived in poverty in Shanyin (modern Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province). He wrote a poem titled “Late Years,” in which he reflected on his worries and the harsh realities of his life.
Shortly before writing this poem, the patriotic poet Xin Qiji, serving as the prefect of Shaoxing and the military commissioner of eastern Zhejiang, noticed Lu You’s poor living conditions and offered to build a garden for him to enjoy his remaining years in peace. Lu You declined the offer. When Xin Qiji left Shaoxing to go to the capital Lin’an (modern Hangzhou), Lu You wrote the poem “Sending Xinyouan to the Court” to bid him farewell. In this poem, Lu You praised Xin Qiji’s literary talents and encouraged him to pursue his ambitions of restoring the central plains, urging him not to be discouraged by past grievances.
The poem includes the famous lines: “Underutilizing talent has been lamented since ancient times; your abilities are comparable to those of Guan Zhong of Qi and Xiao He of the Han dynasty. To achieve the goal of resisting the Jurchen Jin and restoring our lands, the immediate task is to reclaim the lost territories of Henan and Shaanxi.”
These lines were later simplified and became the idiom “underutilizing talent” to describe the misemployment of a capable person, leading to a waste of their talents.
