Advertisement
Tesla founder Elon Musk posts ancient Chinese poem, with Twitter users guessing at meanings from crypto to the UN
- The richest person in the world posted the 1,800-year-old poem The Quatrain of Seven Steps on Twitter without any clear reference
- The poem about boiling beans is a metaphor for a fratricidal struggle with a 3rd century emperor, and is widely known and cited in China
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
19
Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and the world’s richest man, tweeted a 1,800-year-old Chinese poem comparing the killing of a sibling to boiling beans from the same root, spurring conversations among netizens on Twitter trying to decipher what the tech billionaire is trying to say.
Musk, who also founded SpaceX, appeared to address the post to “humankind” before copying the text to the poem known as The Quatrain of Seven Steps. The poem, known for being about a fratricidal struggle in an imperial court, seems to have little relevance to Musk, who is worth more than US$300 billion and not involved in any life-or-death struggles.
Seven Steps is widely known in China and included in the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It is said to have been written by poet Cao Zhi in the early 3rd century under a dictate from his brother and emperor Cao Pi, who thought his sibling was trying to usurp his throne and demanded a poem proving his innocence.
Under the threat of death, Cao Zhi was forced to come up with a poem within seven strides. He used boiling beans in a pot using dried beanstalks as a metaphor, with no direct reference to “brotherhood”.
Musk posted a shorter version of the poem, which translated reads:
Beanstalks are ignited to boil beans
The beans in the pot cry out
We are born of the same root
Advertisement