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悬梁刺股 (xuan2 liang2 ci4 gu3) Studies can be painful
December 27, 2009, Sunday
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CHINESE students are known for their hard work and self-discipline. This is natural since the tradition of "studying assiduously" has been followed here for thousands of years.
"xuan2 liang2 ci4 gu3" is one of many Chinese sayings that are frequently cited today by parents and teachers in encouraging their children and students to carry forward the fine tradition.
In fact, "xuan2 liang2 ci4 gu3" meaning "tying one's hair to a beam and pricking one's thigh with an awl," derives from two stories.
One is about Su Qin, a famous strategist during the Warring States Period (476-221 BC), and the other involves Sun Jing, a learned scholar of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24).
Su's career as a strategist started as a total failure.
He first went to serve the king of Qin, then a great power among seven ducal states that were fiercely vying with each other for hegemony in today's northern, eastern and central China.
But the king never accepted any of Su's ideas or proposals on how to conquer the other states.
Broken and depressed, Su retreated to his home in Luoyang, where he was ridiculed by his kinsmen and even by his wife and sister-in-law.
Su blamed his failure on his lack of knowledge of strategy and a thorough understanding of current affairs.
Therefore, he decided to spend more time studying classical strategy.
Su buried himself in books. Whenever he was too tired, he used an awl to prick his thigh to keep himself awake.
More than 12 months later, the young strategist felt that he was well prepared and then set off for a new mission, this time to help the other six states fight Qin.
Su helped form a chain of north-south alliances and became the head of the so-called "Perpendicular Unionists," who advocated his policy of checking the growing power of Qin.
Sun Jing, before establishing himself as a learned scholar of the Western Han Dynasty, invented another way to keep himself awake while reading books at night.
He tied his hair to an overhead beam, so whenever he began to fall asleep, the painful yank of his hair invariably woke him up.
Fortunately, these self-tormenting schemes such as "xuan2 liang2 ci4 gu3" are no longer practiced by Chinese students today. However, the idiom has survived, and so has the tradition of studying assiduously.
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