"A clumsy imitation" — Phrase of the Week
Chery tries to copy Range Rover — but fails
Our phrase of the week is: “a clumsy imitation” (东施效颦 dōng shī xiào pín).
Context
Earlier in November, a video of a crashing yellow SUV flooded social media feeds.
The clip showed the car driving up a steep stone staircase on a forested hillside. After climbing partway up, the vehicle lost control and slid backwards down the stone steps, slamming into and damaging the stone guardrail.
The car was Chery’s Fengyun (风云) X3L, its latest SUV model launched in September.
The stunt was an attempt to recreate Land Rover’s famous 2018 ascent of the same location — Heaven’s Stairs at Tianmen Mountain scenic area (天门山景区天梯) in Hunan province.
The British carmaker’s Range Rover Sport SVR completed the climb in 9 minutes and 51 seconds. Chery’s SUV was trying to complete the same extreme challenge to try and match the Range Rover Sport.
But a lack of preparation and experience resulted in spectacular failure, with the internet lit up by idiomatic critical quips like:
But the X3L sliding down the Heaven’s Stairs made a mockery of Yin’s claim, as the internet lit up with quips like “a clumsy imitation“ and “making Land Rover look good”.
而从天门山上滑下来的奇瑞似乎在反驳尹同跃的观点，”东施效颦、给路虎做嫁衣”这样的负面评论遍布舆论场。
And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.
What it means
“A clumsy imitation” is the English translation of a classical Chinese idiom, “Dongshi imitates by frowning” (东施效颦 dōng shī xiào pín).
Like many Chinese idioms, you need to know the historical story behind it to understand what it really means, otherwise it makes no sense to the non-native speaker.
This idiom comes from the Zhuangzi (庄子), a foundational Daoist philosophical text written during the Warring States period (approximately 4th-3rd century BCE).
The story appears in the chapter, The Revolution of Heaven (天运):
So, Xishi often frowned because she had a pain in her heart.
An ugly woman in the neighborhood saw this and admired her beauty, so she returned home and also clutched her heart and frowned wherever she went.
When the wealthy people of the neighbourhood saw her, they slammed shut their doors and wouldn’t come out.
When the poor people saw her, they took their wives and children and fled.
The woman recognised the beauty in the frown, but not the reason for its beauty.
故西施病心而矉其里，其里之丑人见而美之，归亦捧心而矉其里。其里之富人见之，坚闭门而不出；贫人见之，絜妻子而去之走。彼知颦美，而不知颦之所以美。
Xishi (西施) is a mythical figure traditionally said to have lived during the Spring and Autumn period (around 5th century BCE). She’s celebrated as one of China’s “Four Great Beauties” (四大美女).
According to legend, Xishi lived on the west bank of the Ruoye River. On the east bank lived another woman also surnamed Shi (施) — known as Dongshi, literally “Eastern Shi.”
Dongshi is the “ugly woman” referred to in the story.
According to the story, Dongshi (东施) was not blessed with good looks, so constantly tried to imitate prettier girls in the village, especially Xishi.
One day Xishi walked through the village clutching her chest and frowning in pain. But the villagers commented that she looked just as beautiful. So, on noticing this response, Dongshi tried to imitate the same pose.
But when she tried it, the shocked villagers fled in fear. The imitation had the opposite effect.
Over the centuries, this story became the four-character idiom “Dongshi imitates [Xishi’s] frown” (东施效颦), which every Chinese student learns by high school age.
It means to “blindly copy someone else’s actions without understanding why they work”, making themselves look foolish in the process. Dongshi knew that Xishi’s frown looked beautiful, but she didn’t understand that Xishi’s beauty was inherent, not because of the frown itself.
In the context of Chery’s failed ascent of Heaven’s Stairs, the idiom captures exactly where things went wrong for the automaker. It was an imitation of Land Rover’s successful 2018 ascent, but Chery wasn’t properly prepared and didn’t understand what it actually takes to complete such an extreme challenge successfully — and so ended up looking even worse as a result.
Like Dongshi copying Xishi’s frown, Chery’s publicity stunt was a failed and clumsy imitation.
Andrew Methven is the author of RealTime Mandarin, a resource which helps you bridge the gap to real-world fluency in Mandarin, stay informed about China, and communicate with confidence—all through weekly immersion in real news. Subscribe for free here.
