Beating the Grass and Frightening
the Snake
| Characters: |
 |
Pronunciation:
Da(3) Cao(3) Jing(1) She(2)
Explanation:
Meaning a careless act that alerts an opponent
and similar to the English idiom of "waking
a sleeping dog"
Tone:
neutral
The Story: Wang Lu was a corrupt official
from the Tang Dynasty. He had a great amount
of money. His subordinates followed him, taking
bribes and doing all kind of bad things. The
local people complained about this a lot.
Once,
when Wang Lu was going over the files, he
discovered a complaint against one of his
subordinates. The file accused the subordinate
of corruption. Wang Lu realized that he was
involved in the case too. While thumbing through
the files, he said to himself: "I must
be careful in the future. I am lucky this
time because the case has been referred to
me."
When he finished reading the material, he
quickly wrote some words on the file: "You
might have just beaten the grass... but I
am like the scared snake hiding in the grass."
Usage
Example (Pinyin): Wei(4) bi(4) mian(3)
da(3) cao(3) jing(1) she(2), wo(3) men(2)
zuo(2) wan(3) mei(2) you3) dai(4) bu(3) ta(1).
Usage
Example (English translation): To avoid
beating the grass and frightening the snake,
we did not arrest him last night.
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.
