树倒猢狲散 (shù dǎo hú sūn sàn)
When the tree falls, the monkeys scatter — when an influential person falls from power, his hangers-on disperse
During the Song Dynasty, a neighbouring tribe to its north called Nüzhen established a kingdom named Jin. It became stronger and stronger and seized large areas of Song’s territory. General Yue Fei (1103 — 1142) led the Song army in putting up a heroic resistance. They won many battles and recovered a lot of the lost land. Just as Yue Fei and his troops were pushing on in the flush of victory, the treacherous Prime Minister Qin Hui who had secretly conspired with the invaders, assumed the emperor’s name, recalled Yue Fei and killed him on a fabricated charge. Yue Fei has always been respected as a national hero while Qin Hui has been cursed throughout the centuries.
Well, notorious as Qin Hui was, he had his followers, since there were people who curried favour with the powerful. Cao Yong was one of them. He was a today and had some king of ties of kinship with Qin Hui. After Qin Hui became Prime Minister, Cao Yong had made rapid advancement in his career.
Cao Yong’s brother-in-law Li Dexin, who was only a village head, frowned upon his deeds and showed no interest in him. Cao Yong was unhappy with Li. He couldn’t bear that a small potato like Li should dare to look down upon him. He began to harbour resentment in his mind. He went so far as to instigate the county magistrate to threaten Li time and again. But Li Dexin never gave in.
When Qin Hui, the treacherous prime minister and Cao Yong’s patron died, all the people he had helped to power fell one after another. Cao Yong was demoted to a remote area. Li Dexin wrote an essay prose, describing Qin Hui as a big tree and Cao Yong and his like as monkeys that rode roughshod over others under the protection of the tree. Now that the tree had fallen, the monkeys cannot but flee helter-skelter. Li sent his essay to Cao who trembled with anger after reading it.
Interestingly, Qin Hui had been a poor teacher of a private school before he became an official. He once wrote a poem when he was tired of teaching those mischievous boys. In the poem, he wrote of his pupils as monkeys and himself as their king. He wrote: “if I had three hundred mu of irrigated land, I wouldn’t have to be a king of those monkeys.” So, Li Dexin made his comparison with good grounds. It had been provided by Qin Hui himself! That makes the satire more bitter.
From Li Dexin’s prose comes the idiom 树倒猢狲散 (shù dǎo hú sūn sàn). When someone of influence falls from power and all his lackeys fall likewise, this metaphor can be used.
(Source: english.cri.cn)
