Kill the chicken to scare the monkey
Kill the chicken to scare the monkey (杀鸡儆猴, lit. kill chicken scare monkey) is an old Chinese idiom. It refers to making an example out of someone in order to threaten others.[1]
In folktale, a street entertainer earns a lot of money with his dancing monkey. One day, when the monkey refuses to dance, the entertainer kills a live chicken in front of the monkey and then the monkey resumed dancing.[1]
In a historical anecdote tells that in the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, Jiāng Zǐyá was asked by his king to find the latter an adviser. Jiāng Zǐyá asked a scholar who lived on a mountaintop. When the scholar refused multiple times, Jiāng Zǐyá killed the scholar.[1]
See also
- "Killing the Chickens, to Scare the Monkeys", a 2011 short film
- Pour encourager les autres, a similar western term
References
- Chinese Idiom: 杀鸡儆猴 (shā jī jǐng hóu) Archived 2015-04-02 at the Wayback Machine
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