It means: when the water is boiling, if you use a ladle to stir the hot water, it will temporarily stop the boiling water, but it will start to boil again soon. However, if you extinguish the fire under the pot, the water will stop boiling forever.

"Raising the soup to stop boiling" originally meant scooping up the boiling water in the pot and pouring it back to stop boiling. The latter metaphor is to postpone the critical predicament, treat the symptoms but not the root cause, and fail to fundamentally solve the problem.

"Cauldron" is the pot for cooking, and "fire" is the firewood used for cooking. When the pot is full of boiling, if you want to prevent the water, porridge, and porridge in the pot from overflowing, there is probably no better way than to prevent it from overflowing. What better way to pull out the firewood from the bottom of the pot.

From: "Yuan Ming·Luo Guanzhong·Romance of the Three Kingdoms·Chapter Three"

Original text: "I heard that 'raising soup to stop boiling' is worse than removing the firewood; although ulcers are painful, Better than nourishing poison."

Extended information:

1. The full name of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (also known as "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms") is one of the four classic Chinese classics. One of the great masterpieces, it is also China's first chapter-length historical romance novel. The author is Luo Guanzhong, a novelist in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty.

2. Era background

At the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, social conflicts were acute, peasant uprisings occurred one after another, and the heroes were divided. After many years of war, Zhu Yuanzhang wiped out the heroes, overthrew the Yuan Dynasty, and established the Ming Dynasty. During this period, people were displaced.

As a writer of dramas and scripts, Luo Guanzhong lives at the bottom of society, understands and is familiar with the sufferings of the people, hopes for social stability and people to live and work in peace and contentment, thinks as an intellectual at the bottom, and hopes to end the misery caused by turmoil situation.

This led to the creation of the historical novel "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" based on the history of the late Eastern Han Dynasty.

3. Important figures

There are 1,191 named characters in "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", including 436 generals and 451 civil servants. The emperors of Han, Three Kingdoms and Jin 128 descendants, concubines, eunuchs, etc., and 176 others. ?

4. Theme of the work

"The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" uses characters as a carrier to vividly interpret the basic spirit of Chinese traditional culture, namely benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, wisdom, trust, Yong and other core factors in the Chinese traditional cultural value system.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Romance of the Three Kingdoms