Three Smelly Tanners 三个臭皮匠

The other famous saying from the Three Kingdoms should of course belong to none other than Zhuge Liang (please refer to earlier post). But somehow I never quite like this proverb because of my high regards for Zhuge Liang and because I do not think the analogy is that good.

三个臭皮匠, 胜过一个诸葛亮 sāngè chòu píjiang, shèngguo yīgè Zhūgě Liàng –“ three smelly tanners, surpass one Zhuge Liang”. 皮匠 píjiang is both interpreted as cobbler or tanner. My personal take on this is tanner because of the word 臭 chòu (smelly). Tanners definitely smell worse than cobblers. And I am not joking about this either. The profession of tanner is also held in lower regards being involved in a dirty, smelly job involving carcasses.

The reason I do not like this proverb is that while three tanners may overpower Zhuge Liang by brute force, a thousand tanners will not match him in wit. Anyway the usage has evolved to mean “two heads are better than one”. It is also use to mean that the wisdom of the masses exceeds that of the wisest individual. In the time of dynasties, nobody really cares for the masses so I wonder when this meaning crept in. It did remind me of a recent book “The wisdom of crowds: why the many are smarter than the few and how ... By James Surowiecki” Maybe, he knows this Chinese proverb…