






续凫截鹤 is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to tamper with the natural order of things, resulting in harm instead of benefit; to ruin something by trying to "improve" it against its nature”. Literally, “lengthen a duck's legs, shorten a crane's”.

Choose character parts and animate their colors, together or in stroke order
Open the tool →
Printable tracing sheets with a QR learning companion
Open the tool →
Chinese and English fill-in vocabulary worksheets
Open the tool →
Turn a Chinese character or sentence into a GIF or MP4
Open the tool →续凫截鹤 (xù fú jié hè) is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to tamper with the natural order of things, resulting in harm instead of benefit; to ruin something by trying to "improve" it against its nature”.
续凫截鹤 is pronounced xù fú jié hè in Mandarin Chinese.
Literally, 续凫截鹤 means “lengthen a duck's legs, shorten a crane's”. It is used to mean “to tamper with the natural order of things, resulting in harm instead of benefit; to ruin something by trying to "improve" it against its nature”.
比喻违失事物本性,欲益反损。