Carrying Firewood to Put Out a Fire

During the Warring States Period, Wei State suffered continual invasion from Qin State. During the reign of King Anxi of Wei State, because of Qin's more furious invasion, Wei State met a series of defeats and lost one city after another. And Daliang, the capital of Wei State, was in great danger. Han State sent troops to rescue Wei State and also met a defeat. In order to end the war, the King of Wei had no choice but end the war in ceding lands to Qin.

Two years later, Qin troops arrived again. This time, not only Wei troops, but also Han and Zhao troops who came to rescue Wei State, were greatly defeated by Qin troops, totally 150,000 soldiers were lost.

Facing such a situation, King Anxi was ill at ease. General Duan Ganzi, also in great panic, proposed ceding Nanyang to Qin so as to end the war. Fearing the powerful Qin troops, King Anxi also thought that ceding land to Qin was a feasible way to make peace and agreed to the proposal.

Su Dai, Su Qin's younger brother, made every effort to advocate that the kingdoms should ally in order to fight against Qin. Hearing that King Anxi planned to cede land for peace, Su Dai went to persuade him,

“The invaders are always greedy. You will never succeed in obtaining peace by ceding land because as long as you grasp any land in your hand, it will be impossible to meet the invaders' desire. Just like carrying firewood to put out a fire, how could the fire be put out? The fire will never be put out before the firewood is completely exhausted.”

But King Anxi turned a deaf ear to Su Dai's words. He continued to compromise with the invaders by ceding territory for peace. So not many years later, Wei State was finally annexed by Qin State.

This idiom means carrying firewood to put out a fire. It is used as a metaphor for a behavior of adopting the wrong method to exterminate the disaster but end up making it worse.

It tells us that we must adopt the right methods in our study and work. Only in this way can we suit the remedy to the case and solve the problems.