棒打鸳鸯

1. • to cruelly separate lovers (esp. by family or societal pressure) to forcibly break up a couple against their will

     idiom

Character by character

• 棒(bàng)stick
• 打(dǎ)a semantically light, transitive verb that is combined with various grammatical objects to form compound verbs and verb-object phrases with a diverse range of meanings
• 鸳(yuān)mandarin duck
• 鸯(yāng)