苏秦刺股

Once upon a time there was a scholar named Suqin. He was utterly destitute(穷困的) from the time he was young with no money to study with. In order to make a living and study, he had to sell his hair or worked for others frequently and went travelling to learn knowledge and skills away from his home to the State of Qi. After a year's study, he decided that he had learned all the teacher's skills so he left his teacher and schoolmates hurriedly and made a living wandering from place to place. But a year later he owned nothing in the world and was completely penniless. He went back to home in rags and straw sandals(草鞋).

When he arrived at home, he was lean as a rake(瘦骨如柴), in rags and dirty. His wife sighed after seeing him and continued weaving; his sister -in-law turned and walked off, not willing to cook for him; his parents, brothers, sisters all ignored and laughed at him.

Suqin's heart was broken seeing that his family treated him like this. He closed the door to engage in a profound self-examination. He found out his shortcomings, and then he bestirred himself to take out all of his books, putting all his energies into his study.

Everyday he studied far into the night. Sometimes he fell asleep on the writing desk. He was overcome with regret after waking up on the second day but he had no good ways to avoid this. One day, he was so sleepy that he fell to the writing desk asleep in voluntarily, but he woke up suddenly because his arms was pierced by something. It was an awl(锥子) on the writing desk. He found the way to avoid dozing off: piercing his thighs! After that every time he nodded, he would pierce his thighs to make himself wake up from the pains. His thighs were usually bloody, horrible to see.

Seeing this his families could not bear to stand idly by, they persuaded him: "we can understand that you want to succeed but you should not maltreat(虐待) yourself like this!"

Suqin answered: "If I do not do this, I will forget my past shames". After this "bloody" year, Suqin became a man of great learning. Again, he made a living wandering from place to place and this time he succeeded, beginning his glorious political life and becoming a famous political strategist in the Warring States Period.