Chinese idiom · 成语
闲云野鹤
Meaning
Idle clouds, wild cranes; a carefree, wandering life.
Character by character
Origin and story
literary anecdoteA story about the poet-monk Guanxiu, preserved in You Mao's Song collection of Tang poetry anecdotes, supplies the related image of an idle cloud and a solitary crane. Guanxiu praised Qian Liu in a poem mentioning fourteen territories. When asked to enlarge the number to forty, he refused to alter the verse and said that a cloud and a crane could fly anywhere; the account then has him leave for Shu. This is a later literary anecdote about independence, not a contemporary transcript. The familiar form with a wild crane also appears in Yuan drama, describing a life free from worldly restraints.
Sources and further reading
In everyday life
退休后，他像闲云野鹤，常常背着相机四处旅行。
After retiring, he lives like a free spirit, often traveling around with his camera.
Describes an independent, unhurried person unconstrained by official or worldly obligations.