Chinese idiom · 成语
焚琴煮鹤
Meaning
To burn a zither and cook a crane; to ruin refined things.
Character by character
Origin and story
Literary analogyHu Zai’s Tiaoxi Yuyin Conghua (苕溪漁隱叢話) quotes Xiqing Shihua (西清詩話) discussing a humorous miscellany associated with Li Shangyin. Among examples of spoiling the setting is burning a qin and cooking a crane, alongside other actions that disregard an elegant environment. The related wording 烧琴煮鹤 expresses the same image.
The qin is reduced from a musical instrument to fuel, and the crane from an admired creature to food. This is a deliberately jarring example in literary commentary, not a securely recorded dinner or a named villain’s biography. The idiom condemns insensitive treatment that ruins something beautiful or refined.
Sources and further reading
In everyday life
把老屋精美的木雕拆掉换成塑料板，简直是焚琴煮鹤。
Replacing the old house’s exquisite woodcarving with plastic panels is a thoughtless destruction of beauty.
A literary criticism of spoiling valuable or elegant things.