不然我们全家要喝西北风去了
“Otherwise, our whole family would be out on the street.”
THE DIALOGUE REEL
破产过两次 还好我收入比较稳定
“He went bankrupt twice. Good thing my income is stable.”
不然 我们全家要 喝西北风 去了
“Otherwise, our whole family would be out on the street.”
其实
“Actually...”
“You should be grateful for my stability, because without me, we would be starving on the street.”
Originating from classical literature, this evocative metaphor describes winter poverty where someone literally has nothing to ingest but the cold winter wind blowing from the north.
LEARNING CHUNKS & PARTICLES
to drink the northwest wind; to have nothing to eat and starve
A highly common Chinese idiom used humorously or dramatically to depict extreme poverty or lack of livelihood.
would have ended up doing ...
A spoken grammatical structure used here to present a hypothetical extreme outcome.
Marks an imminent change of state in a hypothetical negative scenario.
