云蒸霞蔚

Origin and story

The Shishuo Xinyu records Gu Changkang describing the scenery of Kuaiji: countless crags vie in beauty, streams race through valleys, and the vegetation above them resembles rising clouds and richly massed rosy clouds. His wording is 云兴霞蔚, a related form of the familiar idiom.

The exact 云蒸霞蔚 is attested in a Qing letter preserved in Yan Guangmin's family correspondence collection, where it praises the brilliant gathering of literary talent in the capital. The imagery therefore reaches beyond weather. It can portray sumptuous scenery or a flourishing concentration of cultural achievement, with 蒸 suggesting rising or gathering rather than literal cooking.