Today's Three Kingdoms idiom story is found in the Book of Jin? The Biography of Yang Hu(祜傳), which is around the second year of Xianning in the Western Jin Dynasty (276 AD), the protagonist is the famous Western Jin dynasty general Yang Hu. The original text is as follows:
Hui Qin Liang repeatedly failed, and Hu Fu said: "Wu Ping is Self-determined, but when the speed is great." And the deliberators are many different, Hu sighed: "The world is not satisfactory, heng ten dwelling seven eight, so there is a constant judgment." Heaven and not to take, is not the more troublesome hate the later times! ”
The gist of this record is that at that time, the Western Jin Dynasty suffered successive defeats in qin, Liang and other places. Yang Hu also said to Sima Yan, the Emperor of Jinwu, that "if Eastern Wu can be pacified, the Hu rebellion in the northwest region will soon be put down." Therefore, the most important thing to do now is to quickly complete the great cause of the destruction of Eastern Wu! However, after the Minister of Korea and China talked about this matter, there were many voices of opposition. Hearing this news, Yang Hu sighed: "Nine of the ten things usually make you feel unsatisfactory. At present, some people should continue to break and not take, so how can this not make people of insight in the future feel regrets? ”
What this article wants to introduce is an idiom that evolved from the mouth of Yang Hu that "the world is not satisfactory, heng ten dwells in seven or eight", called "unsatisfactory things are often eight or nine", which means that of the ten things, there are usually nine things that make you feel unsatisfactory, there are too many things that are described as undesirable, and volunteering is often difficult to achieve.
Having said the idiom, let's talk about the historical background and main characters of this story. In the second year of Xianning in the Western Jin Dynasty (276 AD), the general trend of the world had undergone earth-shaking changes. Liu's Shu Han Empire had collapsed more than a decade earlier, the Cao Wei Empire had been replaced by the Western Jin Dynasty, and the three-legged standing that had lasted for nearly eighty years had been broken. Compared with the powerful Western Jin Empire, the Eastern Wu Empire, which was located in the south of the jiangsu Province, was already in decline in national strength and political chaos. In response to this situation, Yang Hu wrote to the book many times, proposing the destruction of Eastern Wu.
However, Yang Hu's proposal was opposed by many ministers in the court, and ultimately failed to get the consent of Sima Yan, the emperor of the Jin Dynasty. There are two main reasons for this. First of all, the situation in the northwestern region of the Western Jin Dynasty was unstable, and it had long been invaded by ethnic minorities; secondly, some ministers believed that the water army of Eastern Wu was very strong, and even if troops were sent, it would be difficult to break through the natural dangers of the Yangtze River in Eastern Wu. These views also greatly influenced Sima Yan. Therefore, Yang Hu's proposal has been rejected.
Yang Hu had been competing with Eastern Wu for many years, knowing that Eastern Wu was vulnerable, and was very sorry that his proposal had been rejected, so he issued an exclamation of "unsatisfactory things are often eight or nine", which also became the lifelong regret of Yang Hu, a famous general, because in the fourth year of Xianning in the Western Jin Dynasty (278 AD) after this proposal was rejected, Yang Hu died of illness. After another two years, the Western Jin Dynasty finally launched the Battle to Destroy Wu, and the result was just as Yang Hu predicted, and the Jin army was like a broken bamboo, and soon destroyed Eastern Wu.
Reference Book: Book of Jin