Idiom Explanation:
The unity of all people is as indestructible as a strong castle. The metaphor is that when all people are united, they can form a strong force and achieve success.
Pronunciation:
众志成城
yīn yē fèi shí
Origin:
春秋·左丘明《国语·周语下》：“众心成城，众口铄金。”
Story:
King Jing of Zhou, the twelfth emperor of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, did two unpopular things during his twenty-first (524 B.C.) and twenty-third (522 B.C.) years on the throne: one was to cast a large coin and the other was to cast a large bell.
In 524 B.C., King Jing of Zhou saw that there was a shortage of raw materials for making money, so he ordered a coin reform. At that time, all the money was made of metal, and the main metals for making money were copper and iron. At that time, the big money was concentrated in the hands of the rich and noble, while the small money was usually in the hands of the common people. The reform of King Jing of Zhou was mainly to abolish small money. In this way, the money in the hands of the common people was to be abolished and they would have no money. Therefore, the common people hated this reform very much.
King Jing’s minister, Shan Mu Gong, was very worried and tried to discourage it. He thought that casting large money was not conducive to circulation and was a cruel plundering of the common people, and hoped that King Jing would stop the reform, but he did not listen. Later, the small money was officially abolished. Soon, King Jing of Zhou sent people to collect the waste money from the common people, and wanted to use the waste money to build a big bell. The big bell is the chime. King Jing prepared to cast two groups of giant chimes, one group was Wu-shou and one group was Da-lin. He planned to hang these two sets of chimes together to play together.
At that time, the music minister Lingzhou Dao dissuaded King Jing of Zhou, saying that the bells made with money would not sound good when struck. King Jing asked him why. He explained, “My lord, what I said is not only about the sound of the bell, but also about whether the people like the sound or not. The bell was created by confiscating the people’s hard-earned money, and no matter how beautiful the sound is, people will think it sounds very harsh. When the king does something, as long as the people agree, it will be easy to do; on the contrary, if the people are against it, then it will be very difficult. As the saying goes, when all the people work together with one heart, they can build a strong walled city with many wills, so I hope you will consider it carefully.”
But King Jing still did not listen. In three years, both great money was minted and a great bell was built. As a result, King Jing died of heart disease in the following year, and the Zhou Dynasty then broke out into a five-year-long civil strife.
Similar Idioms:
- 万众一心
