釜底抽薪　(fǔ dǐ chōu xīn)

Removing Burning Firewood

Avery common challenge that most people will face at one time or another is how to find a fundamental solution to a lingering crisis or, in other words, how to remove the root cause of a problem.

If you ask the Chinese, they will tell you the best way to do this is to “take away the burning firewood from under the pot” or Fu Di Chou Xin. They have been using this tactic for more than 1,400 years.

Hou Jing was a good friend of Gao Huan, who was a high-ranking official in the court of the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534 AD). After the dynasty split into two states, namely the Eastern Wei and the Western Wei in 534 AD, Gao became the ruler of the Eastern Wei. He gave his friend Hou a troop of 100,000 and asked him to govern Henan Province.

Hou respected Gao, but did not like his son, Gao Cheng. So, when Gao Huan died 14 years later and was succeeded by his son, Hou decided to rebel against the court. He first tried to seek support from the Western Wei, but failed because that ruler was suspicious of Hou’s motives, since Hou had earned himself a reputation as a treacherous general.

Under the continuous offensives launched by the troops of Gao Cheng, Hou left Henan and surrendered to the emperor of the Liang Dynasty (502-557 AD) in the south. After learning about this, Gao Cheng sent a note to the emperor requesting Hou’s extradition.

In the note, Gao Cheng told the emperor that Hou was a troublemaker and asked him to get rid of him.

“To stop the soup from boiling, you’d better take away the burning firewood from under the pot; and to remove weeds, you’d better destroy their roots,” Gao added in the note.

However, the emperor rejected Gao’s request because he was planning to take advantage of the “Hou Rebellion” to conquer the states in the north. Eventually, Hou betrayed the emperor and ruined his ambitious plan.

Today, whenever people believe that drastic measures must be taken to solve a thorny problem or to deal with a complicated situation, they will cite this popular idiom and resort to the tactic of “taking away the burning firewood from under the pot.”