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This short tale addresses the background story behind the Chinese idiom 一暴十寒, which literally translates to "One day of sun, ten days of frost", and which means "to bust butt for a little while and then get lazy", or "to only work for a short time and then fail". The story below really applies to the latter meaning. Though this is categorized as advanced, upper-intermediate readers could surely tackle this. <!--more-->

This story is a little odd, because the idiom 一暴十寒 means "ONE day of sun, TEN days of frost", but the story references TEN days of sun and TEN days of frost - "one day of sun" is never mentioned. Which calls the whole "story behind the idiom" thing into question. Surely, some of the stories are truly historical, and have stayed with the Chinese people over several thousand years. Some are probably very very recent. 

Now, I spent a summer as an editor assistant in an educational publishing house in Beijing, and I can tell you a lot of these "historical stories" (when they're used as language exercises, anyway) are just kind of made up to fit the word count needed. 

I was recently reading "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Taoism-Holmes-H-Welch-Jr/dp/0807059730">Taoism: The Parting of the Way</a>" by Holmes Welch, and he mentions an interesting phenomenon in Chinese scholarly history: several thousand years ago, some Chinese scholars or philosophers who wanted to get their ideas widely disseminated would write a book, then put the name of a dead but well-respected philosopher on it, and claim they had found a lost work by the other philosopher. Very clever, but it does confuse the historical record a bit. 

These types of stories should be treated similarly - in many cases it's impossible to tell where they came from. Sometimes there is a real historical tie-in to an old text, sometimes it's all apocryphal - basically an urban legend. So, who knows if this idiom what made up my Mencius, made up by a scholar pretending to be Mencius, or made up by a school teacher to help students remember the text - either way, it's a nice (and short) little blurb.

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<h4>Click to Listen</h4>
战国 - [pinyin]zhan4 guo2[/pinyin] - Warring States Period (around 475 BC to 221 BC)
孟轲 - [pinyin]meng4 ke1[/pinyin] - Mencius' full name
孟子 - [pinyin]meng4 zi5[/pinyin] - Mencius' common name 
善于 - [pinyin]shan4 yu4[/pinyin] - To be good at 
指责 - [pinyin]zhi3 ze2[/pinyin] - Point the finger, criticize
阴冷 - [pinyin]yin1 leng3[/pinyin] - Gloomy and cold
生命力- [pinyin]shen1 ming4 li4[/pinyin] - Vitality
少之甚少 - [pinyin]shao3 zhi1 shen2 shao3[/pinyin] - Less and less
陪伴 - [pinyin]pei2 ban4[/pinyin] - Accompany
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<div id="chinesetext">
<strong>战国</strong>时，有个叫<strong>孟轲</strong>的人，大家称他为<strong>孟子</strong>。孟子<strong>善于</strong>通过打比方来发表议论。

当时，有人<strong>指责</strong>孟子不尽力帮助齐王。孟子便解释说:“比如说，天下有些易活的植物，假如把它放在太阳下晒十天，然后再把它放在<strong>阴冷</strong>的地方冻十天，即使是<strong>生命力</strong>再强的植物也会死。我见到齐王的机会<strong>少之甚少</strong>，即使给了他些良好的影响与帮助，我一离开，一些和我主张不同的人，又带给他许多不好影响。我怎么能使齐王的思想、品质好起来呢？”
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During the Warring States Period, there was a man named Meng Ke [Mencius], who everyone called MengZi. Menzi was very good at using real-life situations to create analogies and foster discussion.　

At that time, there was a person who criticized Mencius for not trying harder to help the King of Qi. Mencius explained plainly, saying, "Take this as an example: there are some plants that live well on this earth [lit: under heaven], but if you take them and put them in the sun to dry for ten days, then you take them and put them in the gloom and cold to freeze for ten days, even if their vitality is strong they're still going to die.  My opportunities to see the King of Qi have been less and less, so even if I gave him some good influence and help, as soon as I leave, some people that don't advocate the same things I do will influence him negatively. [That being the case,] how can I improve the quality of the King of Qi's thinking?"
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