司空见惯

Origin and story

Meng Qi’s Benshi Shi (本事詩), in its section on emotion, tells of Li Shen inviting Liu Yuxi to a lavish banquet and arranging for a female entertainer to sing. Liu responds with a poem contrasting what the host sees so often that it seems ordinary with the powerful effect it has on the poet. Its line beginning 司空見慣 supplies the idiom.

Sikong is an official title, not the man’s personal name. The story is a literary account attached to the poem and should not be treated as a fully verified report of the banquet. The expression survives independently of that setting: repeated exposure makes something unsurprising, whether the familiar sight is delightful, tiresome, or troubling.