We delve into the relationship between Cao Cao and his secretary Yang Xiu, a man with a keen understanding of his boss’s mind … and a death wish.

* Transcript

* Explanation of Yang Xiu’s wordplay

Yang Xiu (Source: Wikipedia)

Transcript

PDF version

Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. This is a supplemental episode.

So right before our break for the 100th episode Q&A session, we found Cao Cao stuck in a stalemate against Liu Bei. He knew attacking would not give him victory, but he also didn’t want to retreat because Liu Bei would laugh at him. His secretary, Yang Xiu, was clever enough to deduce his master’s quandary from the password he handed out for the night watch: Chicken ribs.

Chicken ribs, Yang Xiu explained, had no meat to eat but enough flavor that you didn’t want to throw it away, making it a metaphor for Cao Cao’s present predicament. So Yang Xiu decided that this meant Cao Cao’s heart was not in waging a real war and that he would soon pack up and go home, so Yang Xiu figured he should get a head start on packing. When Cao Cao found out, though, he was enraged and had Yang Xiu executed for spreading rumors that hurt the army’s morale.

As I mentioned in episode 92, there was more to this than just chicken ribs. In this supplemental episode, I’m going tell you about the backstory between Yang Xiu and Cao Cao, which provides a warning in being too clever for your own good.

So one time, while he was still prime minister, Cao Cao went to inspect a garden that his workers had just finished building for him. After making the rounds, Cao Cao did not say a word and simply picked up a brush and wrote the character for “alive” on the door. The workers were all befuddled, but Yang Xiu was all too happy to explain.

“When you put the character for ‘alive’ inside the character for ‘door’,” he told them, “it forms the character for ‘wide’. His excellency is saying the door is too wide.”

So the workers rebuilt the door and asked Cao Cao to come back and take another look. This time, Cao Cao was satisfied, and he asked the workers who had understood his meaning. When they told him that it was Yang Xiu, Cao Cao outwardly praised his secretary’s smarts, but inwardly became wary of the man, because Cao Cao did not like the idea of anyone knowing what’s on his mind.

On another occasion, Cao Cao received a box of shortbread from the north, which was considered a delicacy. Cao Cao wrote the characters “One box of shortbread” on the lid and set the box on his desk. Later, while Cao Cao was out, Yang Xiu came in and saw the box. After reading Cao Cao’s writing, he had the audacity to open the box and share its contents with others.

When Cao Cao came back and found someone had helped themselves in his absence, he demanded to know why they had, you know, sharked their lord’s dessert. Yang Xiu said, “It clearly says on the box, ‘Everyone take a bite of shortbread’. So how can we dare to disobey your excellency’s command?”

So this was another Chinese play on words, as the characters for “one box” can be broken down into components that also have individual meanings. In this case, those components could be read as “Everyone take a bite.” I’ll post a visual explanation of this and the other word-play example on the website with this episode, which will help you make sense of this. In any case, Cao Cao laughed this off,