Jingwei has a dialogue with the sea where the sea scoffs at her, saying that she won't be able to fill it up even in a million years, whereupon she retorts that she will spend ten million years, even one hundred million years, whatever it takes to fill up the sea so that others would not have to perish as she did. From this myth comes the Chinese chengyu (four-character idiom) "Jingwei Tries To Fill the Sea" (精衛填海), meaning dogged determination and perseverance in the face of seemingly impossible odds.