Someone taught me this saying. First I thought its a Chinese Proverb.
After hours of searching online, I found out its Mao Zedong's saying.
It means you kill the weaker enemy to scare the stronger enemy. My interpretation, I might be wrong. Anyone knows of a better translation?
6 comments:
It IS an old proverb predating Mao.
杀鸡儆猴 sha1-ji1-jing4-hou2
e.g. you fail one student to scare the others (not necessarily weaker or stronger).
Yeah, but isn't he kind of calling Obama a monkey? If not, who's the monkey getting scared? It's either Obama or the US I would think. Sounds like a very questionable choice of words.
i was recently terminated from my work, which was a blessing in itself because i have grown so tired of all the politics. I was told that my boss was quoted saying that he "killed the chicken so he could scare the monkey"...such an ass he really is.
I think it means that if a monkey sees a chicken killed, he gets scared. REALLY scared. Believe me, you don't even want to know what happens when it's monkey field trip day to the Perdue processing plant. The monkeys don't sleep for weeks.
To Anonymous who said suggested that Mao was calling Obama a monkey.
Mao Zedong has been dead since 1976. He probably had no knowledge of Barack Obama since Obama was only 15 in 1976.
And while Mao may have used this saying to talk about the U.S., he used it in a variety of other contexts as well.
Long time ago. In China, acrobatics have been a part of the culture. A monkey was used to perform acrobatics too and trained by street performer. In order to train a monkey they kill the chicken inform the monkey, so that the monkey will take instruction to perform the acrobatics..
StevenZhaoSingapore
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