‘Appeared out of nowhere’ — Phrase of the Week
A new fictitious university that started as an online joke came out of nowhere.
Our Phrase of the Week is: Appeared out of nowhere (横空出世 héngkōng chūshì).
The context
A fictional university has emerged as an online sensation during China’s competitive university recruitment season.
Shanhe University (山河大学 shānhé dàxué) began as an online joke. A group of students posted about the possibility of setting up a university for students from the provinces of Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, and Hebei, known together as “four provinces with mountains and rivers” (山河四省 shānhé sìshěng).
The name of the university is a combination of the names of those four provinces: shān (山) means “mountain” of Shandong and Shanxi, and hé (河) means “river,” which is in Hebei and Henan.
Competition for China’s national college entrance examination, or the gāokǎo 高考, is fierce in these four provinces, which, relative to the size of the populations, have limited choice of top universities.
The meme quickly captured imaginations, turning it from an online joke into something that looked real. Students began enthusiastically contributing to its development online, creating a motto and emblem, a website, and an admissions brochure.
Historical figures from the four provinces were listed as alumni. Dù Fǔ 杜甫, the Tang dynasty poet, was named Shanhe University’s principal, as a well-known line from one of his poems perfectly captured the university’s ethos:
Could I have a grand mansion, spanning a thousand rooms, I would shelter all poor scholars in the world, making them beam with smiles.
安得广厦千万间，大庇天下寒士俱欢颜。
Ān dé guǎng shà qiān wàn jiān, dà bì tiānxià hánshì jù huānyán.
Shanhe University, and the problems of higher education in the four provinces, was even brought up in a Ministry of Education press briefing on July 6, with the ministry committing to accelerating the improvement of higher education in these provinces.
In the media, the speed at which the idea took shape was a focus:
Shanhe University appeared out of nowhere — what is it all about?
横空出世的“山河大学”，什么来头？
Héngkōng chūshì de “shānhé dàxué,” shénme láitóu?
And with that, we have our Phrase of the Week!
What it means
Appeared out of nowhere is a four-character idiom. The characters individually mean “across” (横 héng), “sky” (空 kōng), “above” (出 chū), and “world” (世 shì).
The phrase was first coined by Máo Zédōng 毛泽东 in the 1935 poem Thinking of the Kunlun Mountains (念奴娇·昆仑 niànnújiāo·kūnlún).
It’s in the first line of the poem:
Across the sky stand the majestic Kunlun Mountains, surveying the unfolding stories of the world.
横空出世，莽昆仑，阅尽人间春色。
Héngkōng chūshì, mǎng kūnlún, yuèjìn rénjiān chūnsè.
Mao is describing how the huge mountain range appears to be floating above the world below.
In modern context, the idiom often describes a product or a phenomenon that has come out of the blue.
It can be translated as “appeared out of nowhere,” and can also imply something that has happened very quickly — like going viral.
There’s an extra layer of meaning with Shanhe University because of the reference to mountains: the Kunlun in Mao’s poem, and the mountains in the name of this new fictitious university.
