{"id":12087,"date":"2019-11-18T00:32:26","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T00:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/chinese-words-phrases\/a-dog-039-s-tale-gou-wei-xu-diao\/"},"modified":"2019-11-18T00:32:26","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T00:32:26","slug":"a-dog-039-s-tale-gou-wei-xu-diao","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/de\/a-dog-039-s-tale-gou-wei-xu-diao\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dog&#039;s Tale \u72d7\u5c3e\u7eed\u8c82"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The ex<em><\/em>pression \u72d7\u5c3e\u7eed\u8c82 (gou3 wei3 xu4 diao1) literally means substituting a dog&#8217;s tail for sable and comes from a story a<em><\/em>bout a fierce and complex power struggle in the court of the Western Jin Dynasty (AD 265-316).<\/p>\n<p>  When Sima Yan became the first emperor of the Western Jin dynasty, he bestowed titles and territories upon a large number of nobles believing that this would shore-up his powerba<em><\/em>se. However, his belief was mistaken. The decision led to factio<em><\/em>nal strife, and after Sima Yan died in AD 290, the power struggled escalated out of control.<\/p>\n<p>  Finally, in AD 300, Sima Lun (the general of the royal army) led a successful coup to became the new ruler. However, Sima Lun ultimately followed the same round to ruin as his predecessor Sima Yan. In order to shore-up his popular support, Sima Lun offered titles to several thousand of his followers. As a result, the court quickly ran out of it supply of official seals needed for certificates of appointment as well as the sable used to decorate the hats of the royal officers.<\/p>\n<p>  To solve this problem, the emperor decided to use wooden plates to replac the me<em><\/em>tal seals and dog&#8217;s tails as a substitute for the sable. People began to poke fun at the emperor (by coining the phrase substituting a dog&#8217;s tail for sable) and he soon became a laughing stock. Needless to say, the Western Jin dynasty was short-lived.<\/p>\n<p>  Today, this Chinese idiom is used to criticize those who create an inferior sequel to a recognised masterpiece. In English, there are many idioms ba<em><\/em>sed on dogs &#8211; for example, as sick as a dog, work like a dog, fight like cat and dog and go to the dogs &#8211; but I have been unable to think of one that has an equivalent meaning to the Chinese idiom \u72d7\u5c3e\u7eed\u8c82 (gou3 wei3 xu4 diao1).<br type=\"_moz\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"chine-tie-zi-nei-rong-zhi-hou\" id=\"chine-1153184588\"><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-1889418300638825\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display:block;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-1889418300638825\" \ndata-ad-slot=\"7273022922\" \ndata-ad-layout-key=\"-gw-3+1f-3d+2z\"\ndata-ad-format=\"fluid\"><\/ins>\n<script> \n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); \n<\/script>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The expression \u72d7\u5c3e\u7eed\u8c82 (gou3 wei3 xu4 diao1) literally means substituting a dog&#8217;s tail for sable and comes from a story<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-12087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese-words-phrases","tag-chinese-idiom"],"views":202,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}