Chinese idiom · 成语
梨花带雨
Meaning
Pear blossoms with rain; tearful beauty.
Character by character
Origin and story
Poetic imageBai Juyi's Song of Everlasting Sorrow transforms the story of Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei into a poem of love, loss, and imagined reunion beyond death. In its supernatural final section, an envoy finds a figure resembling Yang on an immortal island. Hearing that he comes from the emperor, she rises and appears with tears running down her lonely face.
The poet compares her to a branch of pear blossom carrying spring rain. The idiom condenses that image into a description of tearful beauty. This scene belongs to the poem's imaginative afterlife narrative, not an eyewitness description of Yang crying at court. The expression remains literary and traditionally feminine.
Sources and further reading
In everyday life
她在舞台上哭得梨花带雨，把离别的悲伤演得很动人。
Onstage, her tearful beauty made the sorrow of parting especially moving.
An ornate, traditionally feminine description; suitable for discussing a performance, but potentially affected in ordinary consolation.