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The China History Podcast

S9E09 | First Strike

The China History Podcast

Laszlo Montgomery

Places & Travel, Society & Culture, History

4.81.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Season 9 is starting to wind down. For the ninth chengyu of the season, we take Sima Qian's "Record of the Grand Historian" and open to the chapter on Xiang Yu. This time we look at the story of Xiān Fā Zhì Rén 先发制人. In this well-known story from the fall of the Qin Dynasty, we see Xiang Yu and his uncle Xiang Liang seizing the day and the hour to attack Qin forces and bring the dynasty to an end. But before they do that, they first weigh their options by talking with the governor of a local commandery. After one short meeting with this guy, Xiang Liang decides not to wait to see what happens next. He realized 先发制人. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Good evening everyone all appreciators and lovers of Chinese

0:03.1

chung you sayings, Lausl Montgomery here with one more for your

0:07.0

expanding kulezioni.

0:09.4

Today we're pulling out a couple of the heavy hitters from history. We have the mighty

0:13.5

shangliang and his even mightier nephew, shangu, appearing. This is the third time shangu

0:20.0

showing up in a CSP episode. We first encountered him in season 2 with

0:25.6

Simeon Chu Gu and again in season 3 with Paul Fu Chanjo and last time in season 7 with

0:33.5

Gia Ju da Chao and he's back again and why not this Chinese saying comes

0:39.5

from the definitive source for all things shang Yu, the record of the grand historian, the chapter entitled

0:47.1

Shang Yu Bunji. And today we look at SienfaFaa Jure-Ren.

0:54.4

Let's see what this means.

0:56.4

Sheen is an adverb means earlier, before, first, or in advance.

1:02.4

F- means to send, issue forth, launch, emit, and a whole bunch of other definitions.

1:10.0

JE, in this case, means to control or regulate.

1:13.4

And Ren means a person.

1:15.2

And when you string them all together, first launch control person.

1:19.6

Though I'm betting, Simachien meant a man when he said a person.

1:25.1

The star of this Changu isn't Changuu.

1:27.9

Instead it's his uncle Siangliang.

1:30.2

And as the story begins, the Dazse-Sha-Sha-Kiang was sending shock waves throughout the Chin Empire.

1:38.1

All that sorted stuff was going down with Chin-Archer, Jauaukau and Li-Sse. And we remember that Dazez-Shiang

1:46.2

uprising and the two colorful characters who led it, Chun-Shung and Wu-Guang.

...

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