levycrazy's Blog
April 24, 2011
Hi,I'm Levy. Today, I'm gonna teach you Chinese 成语（cheng yu）。成语 is a kinda idiom ,which usually consists of 4 Chinese charaters. For most 成语，there are interesting history stories behind them. Today ,we're gonna look at a famous 成语 in Chinese called 声东击西（shēng dōng jī xī）
First off, let's see the meaning of each Chinese character in this 成语. 声：sound ,东：east,击：attack ,西：west.
so, the direct meaning of this 成语is ： to make the noise east and attack the enemy west.
History Story:From BC 206 to BC 202,there was a war between Chu Kingdom and Han Kingdom,the Han Kingdom's king Liu Bang sent his general Han Xin to finght agianst Chu Kingdom.Chu's king Xiang Yu assigned his general Wei Wang Bao to fight back on the Po hill slope .Han Xin found that the slope is easy for the enemy to protect ,but hard for his army to go through. Thus, he pretended to 撤退withdraw his army,and moved his army to the backside of the hill slope and defeated Wei Wang Bao's army.So, people all this kinda behavior:声东击西。
Today's meaning : now this phrase usually means that you mislead someone's attention and fulfill your own purpose.
eg. 1.When you play Texas Hold'em,if you need a flush, then you should raise money before the flush comes to you to pretend you got a pair of Q or something,so that you will win much money by misleading others. this kinda strategy is called 声东击西。
2. the basketball player who pretended to shoot ,but passed the ball to other player in his team.
Similar English phrase:to look one way and row another .
More entries: Levy's Chinese 成语 lesson 1, I.I., Spread Thin (1), Education's purpose.(boring,don't read)
