Traditional Chinese legend, retold in simple Mandarin
Three Kingdoms: Borrowing Arrows with Straw Boats
草船借箭
Three Kingdoms: Borrowing Arrows with Straw Boats (草船借箭, Cǎo chuán jiè jiàn) is a story from Three Kingdoms, the Chinese classic by Luo Guanzhong, retold in simple Mandarin as a 6-chapter story with audio for learners at about HSK 3 (Intermediate).
Retold from Luo Guanzhong's classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms: a jealous commander demands 100,000 arrows, Zhuge Liang promises them in three days, and then spends two of those days doing nothing at all.
Meet the voices
- Narrator · 旁白 — Tells the old tale of the fog, the straw boats and the borrowed arrows, the way it has been told for hundreds of years.
- Zhuge Liang · 诸葛亮 — Liu Bei's brilliant young strategist: calm, witty, never in a hurry, and always one step ahead.
- Lu Su · 鲁肃 — Zhou Yu's kind, honest adviser and Zhuge Liang's friend, a born worrier who is terrible at keeping secrets.
- Zhou Yu · 周瑜 — The proud, brilliant commander of the southern army, who can't bear the thought that anyone might be cleverer than he is.
- Cao Cao · 曹操 — The mighty northern warlord and Prime Minister, famous for trusting no one.
- Yu Jin · 于禁 — One of Cao Cao's generals, newly put in charge of his war boats.
- The Young Soldier · 小兵 — A cheerful young soldier on the straw boats who asks the questions everyone else is afraid to ask, and loves his drum.
6 chapters, one journey
Chapter 1: The Ten-Day Trap
十天还是三天
Jealous commander Zhou Yu sets a trap: a hundred thousand arrows in ten days. Zhuge Liang smiles and says ten days is far too slow.
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Chapter 2: Twenty Secret Boats
二十条船
Zhuge Liang needs a hundred thousand arrows, but he asks Lu Su for something very strange instead, and makes him promise not to tell a soul.
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Chapter 3: Two Lazy Days
两天过去了
The boats are ready and the clock is ticking, but Zhuge Liang spends his precious days sleeping, fanning himself and gazing at the sky.
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Chapter 4: Into the Fog
走进大雾
Twenty little boats slip into a fog so thick you can't see your own hand, and Zhuge Liang steers them straight toward the enemy.
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Chapter 5: Thank You for the Arrows
谢谢丞相的箭
Drums boom through the fog outside Cao Cao's camp, and the most suspicious man in China has to decide what to do about it.
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Chapter 6: The Same Word
一样的字
The boats come home heavy with arrows, Zhuge Liang finally explains his secret, and Zhou Yu has to face the man he tried to trap.
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Key words in Three Kingdoms: Borrowing Arrows with Straw Boats
Behind the story
Borrowing Arrows with Straw Boats (草船借箭) is one of the best-loved episodes of Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演义), Luo Guanzhong's 14th-century novel and one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. It takes place in 208 CE, just before the Battle of Red Cliffs (赤壁之战), when Zhou Yu, commander for the southern lord Sun Quan, and Zhuge Liang, strategist for Liu Bei, joined forces against the northern warlord Cao Cao.
Zhuge Liang, also known by his courtesy name Kongming (孔明), became China's model of the wise strategist: calm, always a step ahead, and usually holding a feather fan. Chinese children meet this story in their school textbooks, and it has been retold for centuries by storytellers, in Peking opera, in picture books and on television.
Did you know?
- The novel's version is fiction. The history books tell a similar tale about Sun Quan: at the Battle of Ruxu in 213, so many enemy arrows stuck in one side of his boat that it began to tip, so he turned it around to catch arrows on the other side and level it.
- The story lives on in a two-part saying, 草船借箭——有借无还: borrowing arrows with straw boats, borrowed and never returned.
- Chinese people still call a very clever person “a Zhuge Liang,” and a popular proverb says 三个臭皮匠，顶个诸葛亮: three ordinary cobblers, thinking together, can match one Zhuge Liang.