Seizing by Trick or by Force

Characters:

Pronunciation: Qiao(3) Qu(3) Hao(2) Duo(2)

Explanation: Meaning to obtain valuable things of others through cheating or forcible means.

The Story: Mi Fu was a painter and calligrapher of the Song Dynasty. Whenever he heard someone owning an ancient work of calligrapher or an ancient painting, he would borrow it on the pretext of admiring it and make a copy of it. He would then return the copy to the owner and keep the genuine work himself. Sometimes he even deliberately took the original and the copy to the owner and asked the owner to pick it out. Being unable to tell the original from the copy, the owner sometimes mistakenly took the copy.

Once Mi Fu met a man named Cai You on a boat. Cai showed him a masterpiece of the calligrapher Wang Xizhi of the Jin Dynasty in his collection. Mi Fu calculated as he looked at the calligraphy and then said to Cai: "I like this calligrapher very much, I would like to exchange a famous painting for it." Cai You refused him. Mi Fu would not give up though and walked to the bow of the boat and said: "If you don't exchange it with me, I'll jump into the river and kill myself before you." Cai You had no alternative but to agree with him.

Later, people described Mi Fu's behaviour as "seizing by trick or by force.", meaning someone was sly and had strong desire of gaining other's stuff.

Usage Example (Pinyin): Zhe(4) li de dong(1) xi(1) dou(1) shi(4) bei(4) na(4) ge(4) pang(4) zi qiao(3) qu(3) hao(2) duo(2) lai(2) de. Ta(1) shi(4) ge(4) tu(3) fei(3).

Usage Example (English translation): All things here are seized by that fat man. He is a gangster.

Note: The spoken Chinese Mandarin language has 4 spoken tones. We have attempted to re-create those above where after each syllable we tell you (1), (2), (3), or (4) as they correspond to each of the 4 tones. We encourage you to complement your Xianzai.com Chinese Idioms newsletter with a good offline study program.