Idiom Explanation:
Can’t bear the pain of looking back. Mostly refers to the pain of not being able to bear looking back because of the memory of bad or unpleasant events in the past, and is often used to express the sentiment of great personnel changes.
Pronunciation:
不堪回首
bù kān huí shǒu
Origin:
唐·戴叔伦《哭朱放》：“最是不堪回首处，九泉烟冷树苍苍。”
Story:
In 960 A.D., Zhao Kuangyin established the Song Dynasty as Song Taizu. At that time, there were several other regimes around. In order to accomplish the great task of unification, Zhao Kuangyin successively conquered and destroyed Nanping, Houshu and Southern Han, and then aimed his attack at Southern Tang.
At this time, the ruler of the Southern Tang Dynasty was Li Yu, the empress of Li. This man was politically and militarily incompetent, but he was very talented in literature and art, including poetry, music, calligraphy and painting. He grew up in a deep palace and was so extravagant that most of his works depict court life.
Li Yu’s wife, E Huang, was a beautiful woman who excelled in painting, calligraphy, song and dance, but unfortunately died prematurely. Later, Li Yu fell in love with E Huang’s sister, Empress Zhou, and drank in front of the moon, leaving behind the affairs of state.
The threat of the Song dynasty became more and more serious, but Li Yu was obsessed with the life of song and dance and wanted only immediate comfort and did not prepare to defend against it, but simply submitted to it. Whenever the Song Dynasty won a battle or had a celebration, he ordered people to pay tribute to the Song Dynasty. Later, he took the initiative to submit a form to the Song dynasty, hoping to cancel the state name of Southern Tang and become a vassal of the Song dynasty.
In the autumn of 974 A.D., Zhao Kuangyin, the Song emperor, sent messengers twice to inform him to come to Kaifeng for a pilgrimage. Fearing that Zhao Kuangyin would kill him, Li Yu claimed to be sick and did not go. So Zhao Kuangyin used this as an excuse to send 100,000 troops to conquer the Southern Tang Dynasty. At the beginning of the second year, the Song army arrived at the north bank of the Yangtze River, and the capital of the Southern Tang Dynasty, Jinling, was in danger. But Li Yu thought that the Song army could not cross the Yangtze River and spent all day in the palace talking to a group of monks and priests about the scriptures and the law.
One day, Li Yu occasionally went out to the city and saw all the Song flags outside the city, so he rushed to call for reinforcements, but it was too late. In the winter of that year, the Song army destroyed the last reinforcements of the Southern Tang Dynasty and finally broke through Jinling. Li Yu was forced to surrender and was taken to Kaifeng.
Li Yu was dressed in a white sarong and received Zhao Kuangyin’s summons with trepidation. Zhao Kuangyin did not kill him, but insultingly made him a marquis against his orders and placed him in the city. He was nominally a marquis, but actually lived like a prisoner.
Li Yu was a sentimental man, and the painful life after his surrender to Song naturally made him depressed. Soon after Zhao Kuangyin died, his brother Zhao Kuangyi reigned and became known as Emperor Taizong of Song. Taizong revoked Li Yu’s title of Marquis of Disobedience and made him the Duke of Longxi County. However, Emperor Taizong was more suspicious than Taizu. Once, Li Yu regretted that he should not have killed two loyal subjects at that time, and Taizong was very angry when he learned about it.
Another day, Li Yu wrote a song called “Yu Beauty”. The song reads, “When will the spring flowers and autumn moon come to an end? Last night, the east wind was blowing again in the small building, and the old country was unbearable to look back at the bright moon.” It means that one cannot look back on all the good things in the past, and looking back will only make one feel more painful. Later, this song reached the ears of Emperor Taizong, who was very angry that he was still thinking about his homeland. Later on, some more lyrics about his nostalgia for his homeland reached Taizong, who finally couldn’t help himself and sent someone to poison him to death.
