Hearing the Chu Songs from Four Sides

Characters:

Pronunciation: Si (4) Mian(4) Chu(3) Ge(1)

Explanation: Use this to describe someone who is helplessly surrounded or defeated

Tone: neutral

The Story: After the overthrow of the Qin Dynasty, vicious wars broke out between the army led by Xiang Yu, the king of Chu, and the army led by Liu Bang, the king of Han. The Chu army was defeated and retreated to Gaixia where the Han Army besieged it. At that time, Xiang Yu had only a few troops left and provisions were running out.

One night, the Han army sang songs to Chu to weaken their spirits. Xiang Yu wondered why there were so many Chu natives in Liu's army! He thought Liu Bang had taken over Chu's territory.

On realizing that he had lost the upper hand, Xiang Yu bid farewell to his favorite concubine, Yu Ji. Then he led the rest of his army of 800 men, and made a run to the south. When he reached the bank of Wujiang River, there were only more than 20 men left and they were pursued by thousands of Han soldiers. Realizing he was defeated completely, he pulled out his sword and committed suicide.

(Although Xiang Yu was defeated, he is considered a great hero in Chinese history. For thousands of years, people praise him with all kinds of artwork--poems, statues, plays, paintings. The Beijing opera play, "Farewell, My Concubine" is one of them. If you get a chance, don't miss it to admire this great hero!)

Usage Example (Pinyin): Ni(3) xian(4) zai(4) yi(3) jing(1) si(4) mian(4) chu(3) ge(1) le, tou(2) xiang(2) ba, xian(1) sheng(1).

Usage Example (English translation): You are Hearing the Chu Songs from Four Sides now, so you'd better give up!

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.