A Thousand Pieces of Gold
Growing Up Through China’s Proverbs
Adeline Yen Mah
To my husband, Bob, who knows me better than I know myself
(zhi ji) and makes everything worthwhile
My Grandfather Ye Ye told me that when he was a boy growing up in Shanghai, he saw many large red boxes placed at major street corners. Each had four gilded characters written on its surface: jing xi zi zhi, “respect and cherish written words.” Workmen with bamboo poles patrolled the streets picking up any stray pieces of paper with writing. The contents of these boxes were burned at regular intervals at a special shrine in the Temple of Confucius. These paper-burning ceremonies were solemn occasions resembling high mass at a Catholic cathedral, with music and incense. Candidates who had successfully passed the imperial examination were the only ones allowed to participate. They would prostrate themselves in worship and pray to Heaven until all the paper had been reduced to ashes. On their way out, they would further show their respect by placing a donation into a separate red box labeled
Yi Zi Qian Jing
One Written Word Is Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold
Ye Ye said, “Let these proverbs I’ve taught you and the stories behind these proverbs be your most precious treasure. Cherish them and carry them with you wherever you go. Always keep in mind that life is short, riches come and go, but written words are immortal.”
Contents
Epigraph
Pronunciation Guide
Introduction
Chapter 1
The Loss of One Hair from Nine Oxen
Chapter 2
Precious Treasure Worth Cherishing
Chapter 3
One Written Word Is Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold
Chapter 4
Binding Your Feet to Prevent Your Own Progress
Chapter 5
Clapping with One Hand Produces No Sound
Chapter 6
When the Map Is Unrolled, the Dagger Is Revealed
Chapter 7
Burning Books and Burying Scholars
Chapter 8
Words That Would Cause a Nation to Perish
Chapter 9
Pointing to a Deer and Calling It a Horse
Chapter 10
Little Sparrow with Dreams of Swans
Chapter 11
Destroy the Cooking Cauldrons and Sink the Boats
Chapter 12
This Young Man Is Worth Educating
Chapter 13
Banquet at Wild Goose Gate
Chapter 14
Dressed in the Finest Brocades to Parade in the Dark of Night
Chapter 15
Plot to Sow Discord and Create Enmity
Chapter 16
The Heart of the People Belongs to Han
Chapter 17
The Human Heart Is Difficult to Fathom
Chapter 18
Devising Strategies in a Command Tent
List of Proverbs
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Adeline Yen Mah
Copyright
About the Publisher
Pronunciation Guide
Chinese is a pictorial, not a phonetic, language. Words are pronounced differently in different provinces, even though they are written in the same way and have the same meaning. This was true even during the time of the Warring States (475-221 B.C.E.). The historian Sima Qian began the biography of the assassin Jing Ke with these words: “Jing Ke was born in the state of Wei [present-day Henan Province]. The natives of Wei knew him as Master Qing, but those from the State of Yan [present-day Hebei Province] called him Master Jing.”
After the Communists conquered China in 1949, they standardized the phonetic spelling of Chinese characters throughout China according to the Beijing dialect (or Mandarin) and called it pinyin. Pinyin is defined as “the phonetic alphabetic spelling of Chinese writing.”
I would like to introduce a few famous figures from Chinese history to Western readers using pinyin. Chinese surnames come at the beginning, before the given name. Thus Deng Xiaoping’s surname is Deng and his given name is Xiaoping.
INTRODUCTION
Deng Xiaoping is pronounced Dung Shiaoping because x is pronounced sh.
Zhuang Zi is pronounced Jwaang Tze because zh is pronounced j.
King Zheng is pronounced King Jung.
Qin is pronounced Chin because q is pronounced ch.
Zhao is pronounced Jow because zh is pronounced j.
Qi is pronounced Chee.
CHAPTER 1
Sima Qian is pronounced Sima Chien.
Ren is pronounced Run because en is pronounced un.
Li Si is pronounced Lee Ss (like the hissing sound of a snake).
Zhou dynasty is pronounced Jo dynasty.
CHAPTER 2
Xianyang is pronounced Shianyoung because x is pronounced sh.
Zhong Kui is pronounced Jong Kwei.
CHAPTER 3
Xi is pronounced She.
CHAPTER 5
Han Feizi is pronounced Haan Faytze.
Jiang Qing is pronounced Jiang Ching.
CHAPTER 7
Xu Fu is pronounced Shü Foo.
Zhang Liang is pronounced Jaan Liang.
Qin Shihuang is pronounced Chin Shihwang. The name means “Founding Emperor of the Qin Dynasty” or “First Emperor.”
CHAPTER 8
Zhao Gao is pronounced Jow Gow.
Meng Yi is pronounced Mung Yee.
Hu Hai is pronounced Who Hi.
Meng Tian is pronounced Mung Tien.
Fu Su is pronounced Foo Soo.
CHAPTER 9
Xiang Yu is pronounced Shiang Yü.
Liu Bang is pronounced Liu Baang.
Zhang Han is pronounced Jaang Haan.
Sima Xin is pronounced Sima Sheen.
CHAPTER 12
Xiao He is pronounced Shiao Huh.
CHAPTER 13
Fan Kuai is pronounced Faan Kwai.
CHAPTER 14
Hahn Xin is pronounced Hahn Shin.
CHAPTER 16
Kuai Tung is pronounced Kwai Tung.
The word Haan in the State of Haan during the Warring States period is the same character as the surname of General-in-chief Hahn Xin. The word Han in the Han dynasty is an entirely different word from the other two. However, all three are pronounced Han and are spelled identically—as Han—in the Chinese-English pinyin dictionary and in history books. To distinguish them and avoid confusion, I have chosen to spell them differently in this book.
State of Haan
Haan
General Hahn Xin
Hahn
Han dynasty
Han
Unlike in the Western world, Chinese surnames are pronounced first, to be followed by the given names. For instance, my maiden surname is Yen and my given name is Junling. Thus my Chinese name is Yen Junling.
My husband Bob’s surname is Mah. When I married Bob, my Chinese name became Mah Yen Junling, whereas my English name became Adeline Yen Mah.
In a similar vein, Deng Xiaoping’s surname was Deng. His given name was Xiaoping.
Mao Tse-tung’s surname was Mao, and his given name was Tse-tung. Sima Qian’s surname was Sima, and his given name was Qian.
Introduction
As a little girl in Shanghai, I remember coming home from school in the afternoons and running up the stairs. The first thing I did was to dash into Grandfather Ye Ye’s room to see what he was doing. His room was next to mine, which I shared with Aunt Baba, Ye Ye’s daughter and the older sister of my father. When Ye Ye was in a good mood, he would be practicing ca
lligraphy and humming a tune from Beijing opera.
One day I asked him, “Ye Ye, what are these words that you are writing?”
“They are proverbs.”
“Why do you write proverbs when you practice calligraphy?”
He rested his brush on his inkstand and looked at me. “That is an excellent question!” he answered. “Tell me, what is a proverb?”
“A wise saying,” I replied.
“Where do proverbs come from?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“The best proverbs,” he explained, “come from our history. History describes the behavior of people who lived in the past. Those people were our ancestors. We Chinese probably revere our ancestors and our history more than any other people. To us, history is not only a record of what has happened before, it is also a guide to educate children like yourself, giving you examples that will teach you how to live your life. Proverbs mirror the past to benefit the present.
“Now, do you recognize the four characters that I am practicing today? If you do, you can have a choice: a piece of candy from my jar or the legend behind these four words.”
With some difficulty, I read aloud the four characters: “Jiu niu yi mao, ‘one hair from nine oxen.’”
Ye Ye was delighted. “Since I’ve never told you stories from history before, today you get both the story and the candy. But only today! From now on, you’ll have to choose between the two.”
I nodded eagerly, sat on the floor by his chair, and put the candy in my mouth as he began. The narrative he related was so fascinating that soon I forgot about the candy. From then on, I often chose to listen rather than satisfy my longing for sweets.
My Ye Ye passed away many years ago, but his proverbs and the history behind them have remained with me. On one of the last occasions we were together, he said to me, “No matter what else people may steal from you, they will never be able to take away the knowledge of these proverbs from your mind.”
In this book, I would like to share my knowledge, as well as my love of proverbs, with you.
When I first wrote the story of my Chinese family, I chose my grandfather’s favorite proverb for its title. Falling Leaves (return to their roots) is actually the second half of a couplet first published during the Song dynasty (960-1279 C.E.).
Shu gao qian zhang
Luo ye gui gen
Even if a tree reaches the
Falling leaves return to their roots
height of ten thousand feet
Nowadays, the first half of the couplet is seldom used and only the second half is cited. “Falling leaves return to their roots” symbolizes the return of the wandering child to her ancestral home. Grandfather used to tell me that this proverb is a reminder that as a person gets older, he tends to go back to his beginnings.
In the 1980s, when Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and China’s Deng Xiaoping signed the agreement that would return Hong Kong to China in 1997, Deng was asked by reporters to make a public statement. Instead of a lengthy speech, Deng righted the wrongs of 150 years of Chinese humiliation by uttering the four simple words luo ye gui gen, “falling leaves return to their roots.”
On that historic occasion, at a moment when the future of Hong Kong was decided, Deng Xiaoping chose to express his sentiments, as well as the sentiments of over one billion Chinese, through an evocative proverb.
On many other occasions it is recorded that Chinese leaders have based their decisions on lessons learned from proverbs.
In the 1930s China was ruled by Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Nationalist Party. Instead of fighting the Japanese who had invaded China, Chiang was preoccupied with annihilating the fledgling Communists led by Mao Tse-tung. Pressured by the United States to drive out the Japanese before tackling the Communists, Chiang refused, saying, “The Japanese are only xuan jie zhi ji, ‘a disease of the skin,’ but the Communists are xin fu zhi huan, ‘a malady of the heart.’”
In America, Chiang was much admired for his poetic eloquence. What his Western audience did not realize was that Chiang’s statements were not original. He was merely quoting an ancient proverb.
When the Vietnam War escalated and Ho Chi Minh asked for aid from Communist China, Mao Tse-tung agreed to do so and quoted the proverb chun wang chi han, “when the lips are gone, the teeth are cold.” The proverb stems from an incident during the early Warring States period when China was divided into many states. One state wished to invade another state and asked for safe passage through a third one in order to do so. The prime minister of the third state advised his king not to grant the request, warning him that if the second state were conquered, they themselves would be the next target because chun wang chi han, “when the lips are gone, the teeth are cold.” The proverb signifies interdependence between two parties and was first written by Zhuang Zi (born 330 B.C.E.)
While doing research for this book, I was amazed to come across the same proverb quoted in a memorial written 2200 years ago by Li Si, a high-ranking official in the government of King Zheng of Qin. In the year 233 B.C.E., Li Si was sent by his sovereign to the neighboring state of Haan. At that time the state of Zhao was planning to attack Qin and was asking for safe passage through Haan. Like Mao Tse-tung, Li Si quoted the proverb “when the lips are gone, the teeth are cold” in an attempt to dissuade the King of Haan from granting the army of Zhao safe passage. He added in his memorial, “Qin and Haan suffer the same perils. The misfortune of one is the misfortune of the other. This is an obvious fact.”
Substitute the state of Zhao for the United States, Qin for Vietnam, and Haan for Communist China, and we have Mao Tse-tung in 1963 thinking the same thoughts and using the same language as Li Si twenty-two centuries earlier.
In September 2000 I read of the execution of two high-ranking Chinese officials for corruption: one was the vice chair of China’s National People’s Congress, and the other was the deputy governor of a large province. The Chinese newspaper reported that before their crimes were discovered, both had already prepared escape routes in the tradition of the proverb jiao tu san ku. However, they were caught before they could put their flight plans into action.
That proverb jiao tu san ku means “a cunning rabbit has three warrens.” It originates from an ancient history book titled Intrigues Between the Warring States, written over two thousand years ago. The proverb relates the story of a man named Meng who was prime minister to the King of Qi during the fourth century B.C.E. Meng sent his advisor Feng to his fief to collect debts. Instead of doing so, Feng forgave all the loans, telling the villagers that he was doing this on the prime minister’s orders. Meng was displeased, but the deed was done. A year later, Meng fell from favor and had to return to his native village. When he was still one hundred li away, the local people, young and old, all came out to welcome him. Meng was greatly moved and praised Feng for his far-sightedness, but the latter said, “Jiao tu san ku, ‘a cunning rabbit has three warrens.’ You have only one. I am going to build you two more.” Feng then obtained a fallback offer for Meng as prime minister of the Kingdom of Wei. Hearing of this, the King of Qi reinstated Meng as his prime minister. Feng told Meng, “Now that all three warrens are in place, you may relax and live in peace.”
Commenting on the behavior of the two corrupt officials, the Chinese newspapers reported that two common “rabbit warrens” for corrupt politicians were obtaining foreign passports for themselves and moving family members, loved ones, and money overseas. The executed vice chairman had secretly deposited 5 million American dollars in bribes in a Hong Kong bank account for himself and his mistress, whereas the executed deputy governor was quoted as having advised his son to get a green card in the United States so that “you’ll have permanent residence there and I’ll have somewhere to go when I emigrate there myself.”
This true story illustrates the importance of proverbs in influencing behavior and forming opinions in China today.
How do the Chinese think? Why do we think that way? Do peop
le in the West think in a different way?
All of us think with words. Therefore, every form of thought is related to the language, culture, and history of a particular thinker, conditioned since birth in his or her own national category. Westerners and Chinese have different views of the world that sometimes differ or even contradict each other, and yet both may be right.
For example, to an English person, Israel is the Middle East and China the Far East, whereas to a Chinese, Israel is the West and England the Far West. Depending on the viewpoint, the conclusions are different but both parties are correct.
For Westerners to understand Chinese reasoning, it is essential to realize that more than any other nation, China takes its rationale from the roots of its lengthy and well-documented past. A Chinese view of the world is highly dependent on the lessons learned from our forebears. Traditionally, this wisdom of the ages is often encapsulated in the form of four characters and is presented as a proverb.
Many Chinese proverbs originate from ancient history, literature, poetry, letters, and other writings. Based on actual events, they carry philosophical or moral implications that make them significant in contemporary life. At best, they radiate a glow that mirrors the Chinese mind, recalling incidents from bygone eras that define the Chinese way of thinking. They keep alive the memory of fabled legends and, following centuries of repetition, have evolved into coded messages that are integrated into routine speech. Used correctly, these proverbs illustrate aspects of human behavior that capture the essence of everyday existence. They link past and present, providing a stay against chaos. There is no doubt that ancient proverbs still shape the thoughts and behavior of Chinese people today. Lessons learned from conflicts and battles that happened hundreds if not thousands of years ago continue to serve as a backdrop for many Chinese decisions.
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