开门见山

Pronunciation: kāi mén jiàn shān Literal meaning: Open door see mountain

Origin & Usage

Writing or speech that opens (开) the door (门) and immediately sees (见) the mountain (山): no approach, no scenery on the way, no throat-clearing. It comes from literary criticism, where it praised a poem that states its subject in the first line rather than working towards it, and the image is of a door sited so that the whole view arrives at once. People who begin a difficult conversation with the difficult part earn it, which is a compliment paid rather more often than the behaviour is.

Examples

English: "The consultant directly addressed the core problems in her report"

Chinese: 顾问在报告中直接指出了核心问题