| Abstract |
Whether in China or Japan, the four-letter idiom ‘Three at Dawn and Four at Dusk’ is familiar to everyone. However, in the course of communication, the author noticed that there are differences in the understanding and awareness of ‘Three at Dawn and Four at Dusk’ between Chinese and Japanese. In order to clarify this point, this paper examines the differences between Chinese and Japanese university students perceptions and uses of ‘Three at Dawn and Four at Dusk’ and explores the reasons for the differences in perceptions from three aspects: previous research, research methodology, and the analysis of the online questionnaire and its results. The results of the questionnaire show that Chinese students often use ‘Three at Dawn and Four at Dusk’ to describe the party in a relationship who is changeable and fickle, while Japanese students often use ‘Three at Dawn and Four at Dusk’ to describe the person who only focuses on the immediate interests of the relationship. The reason for this is that Chinese students are either influenced by the poem ‘If two lovers are in love for a long time, is it not in the morning or in the evening’, and the words ‘morning’ and ‘evening’ are easily associated with love. Over time, peoples perceptions of ‘Three at Dawn and Four at Dusk’ have become skewed, from ‘warning others not to be deceived by flowery words’ to ‘being fickle and thinking of change’. In Japan, However, ‘Three at Dawn and Four at Dusk’ is, after all, a foreign word, and peoples perceptions of it are based on the original allusion, so there is hardly any deviation in understanding.
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