A friend who understands you completely
The gap between those first two lines is the whole point of a chengyu. It is quoted whole, never assembled, and the literal reading is a picture from the story below rather than a definition — which is why translating the four characters one at a time rarely gets you there.
Whatever Boya played on the qin, the woodcutter Zhong Ziqi heard exactly what he meant — towering mountains, then running water. When Ziqi died, Boya broke the strings of his instrument and never played again, because the one person who could hear him was gone.
Source: 《列子》Liezi, c. 4th century AD
The reading shown is the one each character takes inside this idiom — chengyu keep older readings, so it is not always the everyday one. The meanings are read from the same dictionary that powers the translators.
Want the stroke order for one of these? Each character links to its dictionary entry, which animates it.
高山流水 is pronounced gāo shān liú shuǐ and means a friend who understands you completely. Literally it says "high mountains and flowing water" — like most chengyu, the literal reading is a picture from a story rather than a definition.
《列子》Liezi, c. 4th century AD. Whatever Boya played on the qin, the woodcutter Zhong Ziqi heard exactly what he meant — towering mountains, then running water. When Ziqi died, Boya broke the strings of his instrument and never played again, because the one person who could hear him was gone.
gāo shān liú shuǐ. Press the audio button on this page to hear it spoken by a native voice. Tones here are citation tones, so 一 is written yī even where it is said yí in running speech.
高 (gāo) Tall (high), 山 (shān) Mountain (hill - iceberg), 流 (liú) Flow (drift - move - flu - exile), 水 (shuǐ) Water (river). These meanings come from the same dictionary as the translators on this site, and the reading shown is the one the character takes inside this idiom.
Yes. Chengyu are not archaic — they are ordinary educated speech, and they turn up in conversation, newspapers and exams. This one sits in the intermediate band, which reflects how common it is and how hard its characters are.
Rebuild 高山流水 from scrambled tiles in the Chengyu Story Puzzle, test yourself on idiom meanings in the Chengyu Quiz, browse all the idioms, or save this one above and review it on your review deck.
Every idiom here comes with the story it was compressed from — that is the rule for being listed, and it is why they stick.
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