







宰相肚里好撑船 is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to be extremely magnanimous, tolerant, and broad-minded”. To have a very generous and accommodating spirit. Literally, “A prime minister's stomach is large enough to sail a boat”.
During the Ming Dynasty, Yang Gongfu from Yixing, a Dali Shaoqing (minor judicial official) in Nanjing, was renowned for his poetry.
His house servant frequently gathered duckweed from Xuanwu Lake to feed the pigs.
At that time, Zhang Wusian of the Censorate deemed this improper and dispatched his subordinates to Xuanwu Lake to put a stop to it.
Upon learning of this, Yang Gongfu composed a poem, which included the lines: "You cannot even tolerate a few specks of floating duckweed, how then can your stomach be large enough to sail a boat?"

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Open the tool →宰相肚里好撑船 (zǎi xiàng dù lǐ hǎo chēng chuán) is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to be extremely magnanimous, tolerant, and broad-minded”.
宰相肚里好撑船 is pronounced zǎi xiàng dù lǐ hǎo chēng chuán in Mandarin Chinese.
Literally, 宰相肚里好撑船 means “a prime minister's stomach is large enough to sail a boat”. It is used to mean “to be extremely magnanimous, tolerant, and broad-minded”.
宰相肚里好撑船 comes from a classical Chinese story dating back to ancient China. The full story is on this page.
谀人肚量大。