得隴望蜀　(dé lǒng wàng shǔ)

Insatiable Desire

Avarice knows no bounds. This universal truth is often reflected in proverbs such as “appetite comes with eating,” “much will have more” and “one conquest breeds the appetite for another.” They all reflect the insatiability of man’s desires.

In Chinese, there are also a series of expressions of the same ilk. Of them, the idiom De Long Wang Shu, or “to covet Sichuan after capturing Gansu” is perhaps the most popular.

Sichuan and Gansu are two neighboring provinces in China. The former is located in the southwest and the latter in the northwest of the country.

The idiom first appeared in a war decree issued by Emperor Guangwu during the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD).

In the year 32 AD, Emperor Guangwu personally led a large army to attack Longxi (today’s eastern Gangsu), an area which was then ruled by an opposition force under the command of Wei Xiao.

The royal army surrounded two strategic towns there, but failed to capture either because the enemy was reinforced by troops from Sichuan, another opposition stronghold.

After several months of standoff, the emperor became impatient and decided that he would return to the capital but leave his general Cen Peng to continue the attack on the two towns there.

Before his departure, Emperor Guangwu issued a war decree calling on the royal troops to invade Sichuan after seizing the two towns. The emperor said in the document: “A man’s desire is very hard to satisfy. Therefore, after capturing Gansu, one would wish to take Sichuan.”

The two strategic towns proved to be tough nuts to crack. After several bloody battles, the royal troops had to retreat.

Four years later, the son of the opposition leader Wei Xiao surrendered to the imperial court. General Cen Peng seized this opportunity to conquer both Gansu and Sichuan, thus satisfying Emperor Guangwu’s desire of “taking Sichuan after capturing Gansu.”

Today, this idiom De Long Wang Shu has a derogatory connotation and it is often quoted to describe people who are greedy or nurture insatiable desires.