洛阳纸贵

Pronunciation: luò yáng zhǐ guì Literal meaning: Luoyang paper expensive

Origin & Usage

In the Jin dynasty, Zuo Si's Rhapsody on the Three Capitals became so admired that everyone in Luoyang (洛阳) copied it out by hand, and the price of paper (纸贵) rose across the city. Zuo Si had spent ten years writing it and was initially ignored; the surge came only after a leading critic endorsed it. The idiom measures a work's reception by its effect on the paper market. A book everybody suddenly wants earns it, and the ten silent years are part of what the phrase is for.

Examples

English: "The professor's groundbreaking research publication created such demand that printing costs soared"

Chinese: 教授的开创性研究出版物创造了如此大的需求，以至于印刷成本飙升