Dou3 dan3- Do not be too brave in lives!

Hello, everybody! I’m Li Jun in China. This is our usual time for Chinese language learning online. In today’s class, our Chinese teacher Mr. Li is about to tell you a online Chinese story regarding today’s Chinese phrase dou3 dan3.

It is common that people say dou3 dan3 in daily conversations referring to indicate that a person is usually brave with enough courage. For example, you probably went through an occasion when a employee had noticed some mistakes made by their boss. However, the employee would not point out that false directly both in public and in privacy. The reason is that exposing your superior boss’s mistakes will leave your boss embarrassed or he may get angry. In order to avoid the misunderstanding between the employee and boss, Chinese people would like to learn Chinese by saying dou3 dan3 for a modest attitude and sense, which can be expressed as: Excuse me, boss, it is offensive for me to say that you are really wrong.

To better use this phrase and memorize it firmly, I will tell you a history about the dou3 dan3 in our hanbridge online lesson. The phrase originated from a ancient book called The Three Kingdoms in which it said: jiang1 wei2, the commander’s body was dispatched by the enemy after his death, the bile of him was as big as a bowl at that time. During Three Kingdoms, jiang1 wei2, the general of Shu3 state, became very amazed after hearing that his emperor had surrendered to the military forces led by a general deng4 ai4 in the state of Wei4. All soldiers were also very ferocious. Jiang1 wei2 realized that the situations made it impossible to fight against the enemies for winning, and he was firmly opposed to give up. Thus, it occurred to jiang1 wei2 that he decided to pretend to surrender to another general zhong1 hui4 for his ambitious plan to reunite his country.

Soon, zhong1 believed jiang1. Because there were conflicts between deng4 ai4 and zhong1 hui4, deng4 got too proud after attacking the Shu3 state successfully. For fear of deng4’s rebellion against his emperor, the king let zhong1 hui go along with deng4 for balance of military rights. So Jiang1 would be schemed to made use of this weakness, letting zhong1 battle with deng4 and jiang1 was appointed as leader of the forces. Actually, all soldiers were not agreed to accept jiang1’s surrender, later, all soldiers eventually killed zhong1 hui4 for his deeds. Jiang1 was too weak to defend a large number of enemies, dead finally.

The wei4 military wanted to know why jiang1 wei2  was so brave and ambitious that he dared to battle with us alone. They cut his stomach, finding that the bile of jiang1 wei2 was as big as a bowl called dou3 in the past time. It surprised all soldiers a lot.

From then on, the phrase dou3 dan3 was generated as many Chinese learn to use it . It firstly refers to modify how strong someone’s bravery is. Gradually, it is used as a address of being self-humiliation.   

 Source: 

http://chinesegrasper.page.tl/Dou3-dan3_-Do-not-be-too-brave-in-lives-ar-.htm