drain the pond to get all the fish

drain the pond to get all the fish

Fishing in a dry river, a Chinese idiom, Pinyin h é Z é ry ú, means to fish in a lake or pool. It's a metaphor for taking advantage of the present without making long-term plans. It's from Huainanzi Nanyi.

The origin of Idioms

Nanyi, Huainanzi: the way of the former king is not to dry up the river and fish, not to burn the forest and hunt.

Idiom usage

It's formal; it's predicate and object; it's derogatory. It's by burning the forest. Yuan shuzhuan in Song Dynasty