Dumb as a Wooden Rooster

Characters:

Pronunciation: Dai(1) Ruo(4) Mu(4) Ji(1)

Explanation: Said of being dumb with fear

The Story: Cock fighting was an amusement in ancient times.

Ji Xingzi from the Spring and Autumn Period was a famous cockfight expert. Once he trained a rooster for King Qi. Ten days went by, and the king asked, "Have you finished training it?

Ji Xiangzi answered "Not yet, on seeing another rooster, it is too scared to fight with it."

Another ten days later, the King asked again, "How about now?"

Ji Xingzi answered, "Still not ready yet. It needs to have a cool head."

Another ten days passed, the King asked, "Is it not ready yet?"

Ji Xiangzi said, "Well, it is almost ready now. Its arrogance is gone and it is coolheaded. When another cock crows, it is like nothing happened to it at all. It is like a wooden rooster now. When other roosters see it, they will turn and run away and will never be brave to fight with it. " It was exactly what happened when they tried it. The King was very happy about this.

(Editor's note: people normally use this idiom in a derogatory sense now)

Usage Example (Pinyin): wo(3) da(3) kai(1) men(2), fa(1) xian(4) ta(1) reng(1) ran(2) dai(1) ruo(4) mu(4) ji(1) de zhan(4) zai(4) na(4) li(3).

Usage Example (English translation): When I opened the door, I found she still stood there, dumbing as a wooden rooster.

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.