好容易
hǎo róng yì · HSK 6
with great difficulty
🪨 好 + 容易 = good-easy yet means hard — the irony sticks itself
Like English 'a fine mess' — 好 intensifies but the whole phrase flipped to mean only after great difficulty. The sarcastic reversal is the hook: good-easy equals painfully hard.
好 — woman 女 + child 子
好 is an associative compound showing a woman 女 beside a child 子, depicting a mother with her baby. From this image of maternal affection it came to mean 'good, fine, pleasing.' The reading hǎo means 'good'; read hào it means 'to like.'