Red Hare
| Red Hare | |||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 赤兔馬 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 赤兔马 | ||||||
|
|||||||
| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | chì tù mǎ |
The Red Hare was a horse owned by the warlord Lü Bu, who lived in the late Eastern Han dynasty.
The Red Hare was mentioned in Lü Bu's biographies in the historical texts Records of the Three Kingdoms and Book of the Later Han. It was described as very powerful, and capable of "galloping across cities and leaping over moats". Lü Bu rode this horse in 193 during a battle in Changshan (常山; around present-day Shijiazhuang, Hebei), in which he helped another warlord Yuan Shao defeat his rival Zhang Yan.
The Cao Man Zhuan (曹瞞傳) recorded that there was a saying at the time to describe Lü Bu and his Red Hare: "Lü Bu [who stands out] among men, the Red Hare [who stands out] among horses".
The Red Hare was given a more prominent role in the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, which romanticises the historical events before and during the Three Kingdoms period. It was originally a prized steed of the warlord Dong Zhuo, but he presented it as a gift to Lü Bu later after heeding Li Su's advice. Lü Bu was very pleased to receive the Red Hare and, after being persuaded by Li Su, he betrayed and murdered his foster father Ding Yuan and defected to Dong Zhuo, whom he acknowledged as his new foster father.
The Red Hare was described in the novel as follows:
[...] named 'Red Hare', capable of travelling 1,000 li in a day (this equates to 417 km/333 miles). [...] crosses rivers and climbs mountains as though it is moving on flat land, [...] It is of uniform ashen red, with not a hair of another colour; it measures one zhang from head to tail and eight chi from hoof to head; it neighs as if it has the ambition of soaring into the sky or diving into the sea.
...
Wikipedia