{"id":12139,"date":"2019-11-20T03:01:53","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T03:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/chinese-words-phrases\/the-shield-or-the-sword-zi-xiang-mao-dun\/"},"modified":"2019-11-20T03:01:53","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T03:01:53","slug":"the-shield-or-the-sword-zi-xiang-mao-dun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/vi\/the-shield-or-the-sword-zi-xiang-mao-dun\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shield or the Sword? \u81ea\u76f8\u77db\u76fe"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The Chinese ex<em><\/em>pression \u81ea\u76f8\u77db\u76fe is a very popular idiom. It is commo<em><\/em>nly used to describe situations wher people co<em><\/em>ntradict themselves or their behaviour co<em><\/em>ntradicts their stated beliefs. It literally means attacking one&#8217;s shield with one&#8217;s own spear and comes from a 2,000 year old story a<em><\/em>bout a spear and shield salesman in the State of Chu.<\/p>\n<p>  One day the man was marketing his wares to the gathered crowd. He claimed that his spears and shields were the best in the land. In one breathe, he claimed his shields were so strong that nothing could ever penetrate them and, then in the next breathe, he said his spears were so sharp that nothing could withstand them. After listening to the seller&#8217;s pitch, a man in the crowd stepped forward and said:<\/p>\n<p>  You just told us that your shields are the stro<em><\/em>ngest in the world and that your spears are the sharpest. What happens if you use your spears on your shields?<\/p>\n<p>  The seller was dumbstruck and could not explain away the contradiction.<\/p>\n<p>  The idiomatic ex<em><\/em>pression, tie o<em><\/em>neself up in knots, expresses a similar sentiment in English.<br type=\"_moz\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"chine-tie-zi-nei-rong-zhi-hou\" id=\"chine-295666362\"><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 Chinese expression \u81ea\u76f8\u77db\u76fe is a very popular idiom. It is commonly used to describe situations wher people contradict themselves<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-12139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese-words-phrases"],"views":331,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/vi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/vi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/vi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/vi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/vi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/vi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/vi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/vi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/vi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}