Chinese idiom · 成语
江山如画
Meaning
Rivers and mountains like a painting; breathtaking scenery.
Character by character
Origin and story
Poetic usageSu Shi's lyric Niannujiao, Remembering the Past at Red Cliff, moves from the rushing river and towering rocks to the heroes associated with the Three Kingdoms. The phrase 江山如画 gathers that dramatic landscape into a single comparison with a painting. The poem then imagines Zhou Yu's youthful brilliance before returning to the poet's own sense of aging and life's transience.
The landscape thus carries both visual beauty and historical feeling. The expression also appears elsewhere in Song poetry and became an independent compliment for magnificent scenery. Using it today does not require an actual painting or a connection with the battlefield evoked in Su Shi's lyric.
Sources and further reading
In everyday life
站在山顶望着远处的河流和村庄，我才真正体会到什么叫江山如画。
Standing on the summit looking at the river and villages below, I finally understood what a picture-perfect landscape means.
An admiring, literary description of broad natural scenery.