日新月异

Pronunciation: rì xīn yuè yì Literal meaning: Day new month different

Origin & Usage

New (新) by the day (日), different (异) by the month (月). The phrasing echoes the basin inscription quoted in the Great Learning — 苟日新，日日新，又日新, if you can renew yourself one day then do it daily, and again — where the subject is moral cultivation and the renewal is deliberate. The idiom kept the rhythm and dropped the effort: what it describes now is change happening at that rate on its own. Technology and cities, admiringly, with a faint undertow of not being able to keep up.

Examples

English: "Technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace."

Chinese: 科技发展日新月异。