日期: 2022-01-03
In this article we are going to discuss what "when the lips are gone, the teeth chill" mean. In Chinese, it is 唇亡齒寒. This old saying is basically used as an advice or a warning to someone who is thinking about abandoning a friend or an ally. This is the story about the Jean State, as the second great power during the east chow dynasty that came about after the Chi State had lost its status as the first great power. We have talked about the Chi State in our fourth and fifth episodes.
The Jean state in the early days of the West chow dynasty around 700 BC had been granted the Marquis title with its territory located in the north of yellow river in the province of Xanshi nowadays. But on day in the year 745 BC the Jean State’s ruler, Jean Jaw Marquess had bestowed the city of Chufoo, as well as the farmland around it and peasants as serfs working on it, to one of his uncles, Uncle Huan. But the problem was that the sizes of the land grant and the of people connected to Chufoo were so much larger than those of the Yi City, the then capital city of the Jean State, which was a violation of the Chou Etiquette Rule prohibiting a low-class nobility to enjoy anything better than his master of higher nobility ranking.
As the years had gone by, Uncle Huan was getting stronger and stronger until one day he put his ambition into reality by launching attacks on his nephew, which had started the seventy years’ vendetta between the two cities until the City of Chufoo finally replaced the City Yi to become the ultimate ruler of the Jean State in 678 BC, and Jean Woo Duke was the first Chufoo ruler to control the entire Jean State.
During this entire time, the Chou emperor had always sided with the Yi City nobility to have summoned all the forces he could possibly put together trying to help the Yi City fend off attacks from Chufoo, and one such powerful group of force came from the Quo State in the south of the Jean State which, although smaller in its size, had been hostile to the Jean Woo Duke even after his becoming the Jean State’s only legitimate ruler, and due to this reason both states had been constantly butting heads with another other.
Following the Jean Woo Duke, his son Jean Shea Duke had come about as the Jean State’s new ruler who was even more effective than his dad expanding the Jean State’s territory, and during his lifetime, he had been known to have wiped out and annexed 37 other vassal states until 661 BC he had determined that it was the Quo State’s turn to join the big Jean family. But the problem was the Quo State was in alliance with its neighboring state, the Yo State, while the Jean State’s troop could not reach the Quo State unless otherwise going through the Yo State, and that was an issue that the Jean Shea Duke had to resolve first. One day his top adviser, Sun Si suggested giving their best horses and jade artifacts to the Yo Duke in exchange for his permission to allow Jean State’s troop passing through the Yo State to reach to the Guo State.
But Jean Shea Duke was not so sure about that because he happened to have learned that the Yo State’s top advisor Gong Chichi would try hard to stop the Yo Duke from doing anything stupid, not to mention that the Jean Shea Duke himself was still stingy about giving the horses and jade artifacts away. But Shawn Si persisted by saying: “Firstly, the Yo Duke was such a horse and jade enthusiast that there was no way he could have turned them down, and secondly, since the Yo State itself will be our secondary target after we are done with Guo State, we sure can take everything back eventually, so that we are only lending everything to them temporarily,” to which the Jean Shea Duke finally agreed.
So that later on the Jean State’s emissary took all of the valuable gifts with him to visit the Yo Duke saying: “These horses and jade artifacts only represent our good faith to borrow access from the Yo State to reach the Guo State, with which our master Jean Shea Duke intends to reach to get even for what they had done to the Jean State previously. It will be a quick move and we promise that nothing bad will come to the Yo State, to which the Yo Duke agreed and accepted everything, over Gong Chichi’s objection to which the Yo Duke simply had turned a deaf ear, while Gong Chichi commented secretly with his colleges saying: “we will soon not be able to attend Yo State’s ancestor-worshipping ceremonies,” shaking his head sadly sighing when saying this famous old saying “once the lips are gone, the teeth chill.”
Just as a footnote, he was predicting that since the Yo State would soon perish, there would no longer be any state-level ceremonies held to worship the Yo Duke’s ancestors anymore. Gong Chichi then quit his job and fled the country.
After being allowed to pass through the Yo State, the Jean State had immediately started its military campaign against the Guo State for the first time, while the Quo State was caught by surprise and was defeated, although not yet completely vanquished. Meanwhile, the Yo Duke continued enjoying his new experiences with the fine horses and the jade artifacts, thinking that the Yo State and the Jean State were allies, and the Quo State could not do anything about it.
Three years later the Jean State resumed its military campaign to destroy and annex the Quo State, which it succeeded this time, but much to the Yo Duke’s surprise, the Jean did the same thing to the Yo State on its way back from the Guo State, having the Yo State being annexed and merged into the Jean State, but only quicker and easier. However, the Yo State got better treatments because the Yo people were allowed to keep their royal shrines and to continue worshiping their ancestors.
Also, the Jean State also had kept the Yo Duke alive, but only as a male human dowry to work as a male slave next time when the Jean State was to marry one of its princesses to the prince of another vassal state of the Chou empire. One more thing to note, the Jean State also took back everything, the horses and the jade artifacts from the Yo Duke, who no longer had the chances to enjoy the pleasure anymore.
貼文者：Mariia