the broken stem of a floating duckweed -- wandering about

the broken stem of a floating duckweed -- wandering about

Chinese idiom, Pinyin is Du à ng à ngpi à op é ng, which means like a broken stem or a floating Artemisia. It describes people's life is not fixed when they travel around. From qingpingle.

Notes on Idioms

Stem: the stem of a plant; Peng: Artemisia scoparia, which is often broken off from the root in the wind.

The origin of Idioms

Song Shi Xiaoyou's "qingpingle" CI: "self pity common form of dust, a few years off."

Idiom usage

As an object or attributive, it refers to the unfixed life. Example a young lady of an aristocratic family, who has been lonely all her life, is like a broken skeleton. It's hard to predict her life or death. (Wenkang's biography of heroes and heroines in Qing Dynasty, Chapter 22)

Analysis of Idioms

Synonym: wandering, wandering antonym: settling down