Chinese idiom · 成语
破镜重圆
Meaning
A broken mirror made whole again; a couple reunited after separation or estrangement.
Character by character
Origin and story
Traditional literary anecdoteMeng Qi’s Tang collection Benshi Shi (本事詩), in its section on emotion, tells of Xu Deyan and his wife, Princess Lechang, before the Chen dynasty’s collapse. Fearing separation, they divide a mirror and agree that a half will be offered in the capital’s market on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. After Chen falls, the princess enters the household of Yang Su.
Xu eventually finds a servant selling her half, matches it with his own, and sends a sorrowful poem. When Yang Su learns why the princess is weeping, he allows the couple to reunite and gives them gifts. They return south together. This later literary account supplies the image for spouses reunited after separation or estrangement; the mirror is a recognition token, not a magical repair.
Sources and further reading
In everyday life
经过一年的认真沟通，这对分居的夫妻终于破镜重圆了。
After a year of serious communication, the separated couple finally reconciled.
Most naturally describes a couple reuniting or repairing their relationship, not fixing an ordinary object.