中国古代寓言英文

Plugging Ones Ears While Stealing a Bell 掩耳盗铃During the Spring and Autumn period, Zhi Bo of the Spring and Autumn period,Zhi Bo of the State of Jin destroyed Fans family. Takingadvantage of this occasion, a man went to Fans house and tried to steal something. As soonas the man entered the gate, he saw that there hung a big bell in the courtyard. The bell was cast in high-quality bronza, and was beautiful in design and shape. The theif was veryglad, and decided to carry this beautiful bell back home. But no matter how hard he tried,he could not move the bell,because the bell was both big and heavy. He thought and thought again, and believed there was only one way to solve the problem. He had to break the bell topieces before he was able to carry them back to his home separately. The thief found a bigiron hammer, with which he struck the bell with all his might. The striking produced anenormous crashing sound, which might. The striking produced an enormous crashing sound, which made the thief terribly frightened. The thief got flurried, thinking that it was toobad to have produced the crashiing sound which would himself on the bell, trying to mufflethe crashing sound with his arms. But how could the crashing sound of the bell be muffled?The crashing sound still kept drifting melodiously to distant places. The more he listened tothe sound, the more frightened hw became. He xubconsciously shrank back, and covered hisears hard with his hands." Hey, the sound becomes fainter, inaudible," the thief becamecheerful at once," wonderful! The sound of the bell can not be heard when the ears arecovered." He immediately got some odd bits of cloth, made two rolls with them, and had hisears plugged with the two cloth rolls. He thought that in this way nobody could hear the soundof the bell. Feeling relieved, he began striking the bell, one blow after another. Theresounding sound of the bell was heard at distant places, and finally people caught the thiefby gracing the sound. This story comes from" Knowing Yourself" in The Annals by Buwei, writtenjust before the Qin Dynasty（221-207 B.C.） was founded. Allegedly, when LiYuan, Emperor Gao Zu of the Tang Dynasty（618-907），read this story, he felt it simplyridiculous and said," This is what is called plugging ones ears while stealing a bell."Later, people have used the set phrase "plugging ones ears while stealing a bell" to refer tohe ignorance and foolishness of the person who deceives himself as well as others.