而不essential網 (bù dé yào lǐng), originally refers to not understanding the true intention and interest, and the latter metaphor does not grasp the key to the matter. The idiom comes from the "History · Dawan Liebiography", "Qian from the Yueshi to Daxia, but he can't get the essentials of the Yueshi." ”
In the pre-Qin period, in the Dunhuang area of Hexi, there was a powerful tribe called the "Da Yue Clan". Because of the neighbors with the Xiongnu, the two sides often clashed, and later because they were defeated by the Xiongnu many times, so that the country's strength was declining. After Lao Shangdan Yu ascended the throne, he once again attacked the Great Yue Clan, and the Yue Clan King was not only defeated and killed, but his skull was made into a wine vessel.
After the defeat of the Otsuki clan, they were forced to move out of Hexi and move west to the Western Regions. After driving out the Da Yue clan, the Xiongnu forces began to penetrate deep into the Hexi Corridor, and successively conquered the countries of the Western Regions north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, and then posed a threat to the Han Dynasty from the northwest.
After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty ascended the throne, after nearly a hundred years of accumulation in the early Han Dynasty, the national strength of the Han Dynasty has been greatly enhanced, so Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty began to shift from strategic defense to strategic offensive against the Xiongnu.
In order to alleviate the threat of the Xiongnu to the border of the Han Dynasty, after learning from the Xiongnu that the Dayue tribe had been interested in revenge for many years, he decided to send people to the Western Regions to contact the Dayue Clan, and openly recruited talents who could take on important responsibilities for this purpose. Zhang Qian, a Langguan who was born in Chenggu County, Hanzhong County, stepped forward to apply for the recruitment and took on the important task of traveling westward.
In the second year of the founding of the Yuan Dynasty (139 BC), Zhang Qian led more than 100 entourages, with the Hun Tangyi father as a guide, set off from Chang'an to the Western Regions, and embarked on a journey to find the Dayue tribe.
Because the Hexi Corridor and the Western Regions were controlled by the Xiongnu at that time, when Zhang Qian and his party hurriedly passed through the Hexi Corridor, they unfortunately encountered the Hun cavalry, and all of them were captured by the Xiongnu. After learning that Zhang Qian was an envoy of the Han Dynasty, the kings of the right of the Xiongnu immediately escorted Zhang Qian and others to the court of the Xiongnu and presented them to the military minister Shan Yu.
After learning the purpose of Zhang Qian's envoy to the Dayue Clan, the monarch and minister Shan Yu said, "The Dayue Clan has been driven to the north by me, and if you want to send them, you must pass through our Xiongnu, do you think I will let the envoys of the Han Dynasty pass?" If I wanted to send an envoy to South Vietnam, would the Han Dynasty let our people pass through? So Zhang Qian and others were detained in the Xiongnu.
During the period of being detained by the Xiongnu, the military minister Shan Yu tried to persuade Zhang Qian to give up the mission many times, and even wanted to win over Zhang Qian for his own use, so he adopted various coercion and inducements. Zhang Qian, who sent people under the fence, although he expressed obedience on the surface, and even married a wife and had children under the arrangement of the military minister Shan Yu, showing that he wanted to take root in the Xiongnu, but deep down he never gave up his mission.
In the sixth year of Yuanguang (129 BC), seeing that Zhang Qian had been imprisoned for ten years, he had never intended to escape, and even after many years of nomadic life, he was no different from the Huns, so he gradually relaxed his surveillance. Zhang Qian took advantage of the unpreparedness of the Huns, led his entourage to escape from the Huns, and continued to embark on the difficult journey to the west.
When Zhang Qian arrived in the Western Regions after many hardships, he learned that during the ten years of his captivity, the Dayue tribe, which had originally moved west to the Western Regions, had been forced to leave the Ili River valley and continue to migrate westward because of the successive attacks by Wusun and the Xiongnu, and moved to the Fushui (i.e., Amu Darya) valley near the Aral Sea in Central Asia.
Zhang Qian, who learned the news, was not discouraged, and under the guidance of the locals, reformulated a westward route, and then led his entourage to continue westward.
After that, Zhang Qian and his entourage turned southwest after passing through the Cheshi, entered the Yanqi Kingdom, and then followed the Tarim River, passed through the hot desert Gobi, and passed through Kucha, Shule and other places, and continued to the west to climb the high roof ridge, the snow-capped green ridge (that is, the Pamir Plateau), and arrived at Dawan.
After Zhang Qian arrived in Dawan, he revealed his identity as an envoy of the Han Dynasty to King Dawan, and King Dawan looked at the group of ragged people standing in front of him, unable to connect them with the envoys of a country at all. It wasn't until he heard about Zhang Qian's encounters along the way that King Dawan had great respect for Zhang Qian.
Due to his unfamiliarity, Zhang Qian hoped that Dawan could send someone to lead him to Yueshi, and said that when he returned to the Han Dynasty in the future, he would definitely give the emperor and give him a lot of property as a reward. King Dawan has long heard of the wealth of the Han Dynasty in the East, and wants to communicate with the Han Dynasty, and now that the identity of Zhang Qian's envoy to the Han Dynasty has been confirmed, how can King Dawan disagree.
After giving Zhang Qian and others a warm hospitality, the guide and translator sent by King Dawan sent Zhang Qian and his party to Kangju and explained the situation to King Kangju, so King Kangju sent someone to send Zhang Qian and others to Dayue's clan.
However, when Zhang Qian revealed his identity to the king of the Yue clan, although the king of the Yue clan was very happy that the envoys of the Han Dynasty had come to the Yue clan thousands of miles away, he chose to refuse the proposal of the Han Dynasty to attack the Xiongnu.
It turned out that after the Dayue clan moved westward, they defeated the local aborigines, the Great Xia Kingdom, and seized the fertile land in the Fushui Valley. Compared with the original land in Hexi and the Western Regions, the land is more fertile and richer, and without the invasion of foreign enemies, the people of the Dayue clan now only want to live a peaceful life, and do not want to participate in the continuous war. What's more, the Dayue clan, which has moved to Central Asia, is too far away from the Xiongnu, and it is difficult to help each other with the Han Dynasty.
It is precisely because Zhang Qian was imprisoned by the Xiongnu for ten years and did not know the changes in the situation of the Yue clan that there was the sentence "Qian from the Yue clan to the Great Xia, but he couldn't get the essentials of the Yue clan." ”
Zhang Qian stayed in Yueshi for more than a year, on the one hand, he walked around with his attendants to learn more about the customs, topography and landforms of Central Asia, and even went south to reach the Lan City in Great Xia, and on the other hand, he constantly lobbied the king of Yueshi. It was not until the first year of Yuanshuo (128 BC) that Zhang Qian embarked on his way home because the king of the Yue clan was always unmoved.
In order to avoid encountering the Huns, Zhang Qian did not choose to return the same way, but made a detour to the Qinghai region where the Qiang people lived, but he did not expect that the Qiang people would also become vassals of the Xiongnu at this time, and they were captured by the Xiongnu again. It was not until the winter of the third year of Yuan Shuo (127 BC) that due to the death of the military minister Shan Yu, civil strife broke out in the Xiongnu, and Zhang Qian escaped from the Xiongnu and returned to the Han Dynasty.