Xi Shi's beauty was said to be so extreme that while leaning over a balcony to look at the fish in the pond, the fish would be so dazzled that they forgot to swim and sank below the surface. This description serves as the meaning behind the first two characters of the Chinese idiom 沉魚落雁, 閉月羞花 (pinyin: chényú luòyàn, bìyuè xiūhuā),[clarification needed] referring to the Four Beauties which is used to compliment a woman's beauty, meaning one so beautiful she sinks fish and entices birds to fall, eclipses the moon and shames flowers, (literally 'Fish dive/Goose fall, Moon hide/Flower shame').