The Military Genius, Zhuge Liang - Skritter Chinese

You're watching a Skritter video. Want to learn how to write Japanese or Chinese characters very very efficiently and effectively? Go check out our app at skritter.com. Today we're going to learn a wonderful expression that celebrates the power of collective wisdom and learn a little story from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The expression that I'd like to share with you today is So let me give you the overall meaning of the expression. It means that three normal people can often trump the ideas of one genius. Let's break down the expression a bit more because the story behind it is really quite interesting and hopefully you'll be able to use the expression next time you're in a room, there's a couple of buddies, you're trying to figure out a problem, maybe you're feeling a bit disheartened and you can be like, guys, we can come up with a great solution because At the end of the expression, we hear this name and he's a key character in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a romanticized version of For the expression today, we're looking at a very specific episode in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, something that you might actually be familiar with. We're looking at the story of Red Cliff. Now, this was made into a very famous film. It's actually a film that Guolem and I watched at university. Now, Zhuge Liang was one of the most renowned strategists in Chinese history, full stop. When Zhuge Liang's name is mentioned in expressions or stories, it's often used as a synonym to genius. And that's how it's used in today's expression. So three choupi jiang, we'll come to that later. Three choupi jiang, three ordinary people can beat a genius. Now, how did this expression come to be? There's many versions of the story of how allegedly this expression formed, but the version I like concerns Zhou Yu, Zhuge Liang and Red Cliff. It's said that in the midst of battle, Zhou Yu turned to Zhuge Liang and asked him, how does one win water warfare or war on rivers? Zhuge Liang said to him, the key is bows and arrows or specifically arrows. Unfortunately, at that time, Zhou Yu did not have enough arrows to beat the infamous Cao Cao. And when Zhou Yu shared that predicament with Zhuge Liang, he said, is it possible to help me make arrows in a very ingenious way in, let's say, 10 days? To Zhou Yu's surprise, Zhuge Liang turned around and said to him, I'll give you 100,000 arrows in three days. Nobody believed Zhuge Liang. How could you come up with 100,000 arrows in three days? After the meeting with Zhou Yu, Zhuge Liang then turned to his three trusted military advisors or three trusted right-hand men. He said that as the next couple of days would be super foggy, why don't we fill tons of boats full of straw? We'll send out the boats on the river and we'll start drumming. The opposing army will think that we're attacking and they will loosen their bows. We'll get to collect all the arrows and all we have to do is reel the boats back in. The three of them mulled on the idea and thought, it's not really going to look that realistic, is it? I mean, even if it's boats on a river, why don't we actually build straw men, have the straw men wear our military uniform, then it will be much more convincing. The three advisors then went back to Zhuge Liang and shared this improved plan. What he said was that a wise or very smart person often has too many concerns and often that leads to mistakes. Now you might be looking at the first half of the expression and thinking Pi Jiang. Pi, isn't that leather or skin? There are versions of this story where the story does portray these three people as people that worked with leather or leather smiths. Instead, in the most popular version, it said that it's actually a misuse of characters. Pi Jiang was the term to use for a vice general or someone high up in military command. I really like this story because it shows that as smart as one person can be or as smart as a genius can be, there's nothing that trumps wisdom and experience. And even someone as smart as Zhuge Liang still relied on experienced military generals. Now you could say that they were men of normal wit or normal intellect, but they still came up with a better solution. And you might be wondering if Zhuge Liang and his three men got those arrows in the end. Yes, they did. The following day, they dressed up the boats, filled it with straw, dressed up the straw men, pushed along the river, and they started sounding those drums. Cao Cao released tons and tons of arrows into the straw boats to which Zhuge Liang then collected back and Zhou Yu finally got his 100,000 arrows. Now let's practice the expression one more time. If you like this video, please do support this channel by going to check out Skritter.com and getting your trial account if you haven't already. See you next time. 再见!