别有洞天

Pronunciation: bié yǒu dòng tiān Literal meaning: Having another cave heaven

Origin & Usage

洞天 is a Daoist term of art: the grotto-heavens, a set of worlds held to exist inside particular mountains, with their own light and seasons, reached through a cave mouth. To find another (别) such heaven (有洞天) is therefore not to find a pretty view but to find that a second world has been sitting inside the first one. Li Bai's 别有天地非人间 — there is another world here, and it is not the human one — is the ancestor of the modern phrase. Stepping through a plain doorway into something unexpected — and work whose surface gives no hint of what is underneath it.

Examples

English: "Behind the modest entrance lies a surprisingly beautiful garden."

Chinese: 朴素的入口后面别有洞天，是一个美丽的花园。