







滚芥投针 is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to make painstakingly slow progress with extremely meager or negligible results, akin to the immense difficulty of rolling a tiny mustard seed and trying to thread a needle into a minuscule opening”.

Printable tracing sheets with a QR learning companion
Open the tool →
Chinese and English fill-in vocabulary worksheets
Open the tool →
Picture and word Bingo for your class
Open the tool →
Create PNGs with pinyin, highlight character parts or remove strokes
Open the tool →滚芥投针 (gǔn jiè tóu zhēn) is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to make painstakingly slow progress with extremely meager or negligible results, akin to the immense difficulty of rolling a tiny mustard seed and trying to thread a needle into a minuscule opening”.
滚芥投针 is pronounced gǔn jiè tóu zhēn in Mandarin Chinese.
芥:小草。滚动芥籽,把针投掷进小的孔眼。比喻事情进展很慢,成效小