means a small fish in a dry cart ditch, and is a metaphor for someone in distress who is desperate for assistance.

Dry Rut Fish, a Chinese idiom with the pinyin hé zhé zhī yú, means a small fish in a dry cart ditch, and is a metaphor for someone in distress who is desperate for assistance. From "The Four Wise Men's Records - Sue and Loan".

Chinese idiom source: Ming-Wu Ming's "The Four Sages' Records - Sue and Loan": "Alarmed by the grass and trees, lifting up my eyes to see where Tsubaki and Xuanxuan are, tired as a bereaved dog, and grooming like a fish in a dried-up cart ditch." ?

Chinese idiom usage: as subject and object; a metaphor for a person in distress.

Near synonym: dry rut of perch

Dry rut of perch (pinyin: hé zhé zhī fù) is a Chinese idiom derived from a fable, and the allusion to the idiom is first found in Zhuangzi - The Outer Things.

The original meaning of "涸辙之鲋" is "carp in a dry rut" (涸: dry water; rut: rut, the mark of a wheel; perch: carp); it refers to a fish that is about to die of thirst, and is also a metaphor for a person who is in a difficult situation and needs urgent assistance; it usually serves as the subject and the object in a sentence.