Many people are familiar with Napoleon's famous saying that Napoleon I once described China as a sleeping lion, "Let him sleep, and when he wakes up, the whole world will tremble".

However, although the archives of the Napoleonic era were well preserved and the developed European media recorded many words and deeds of this man of the hour, this "sleeping lion theory" never fell down.

The earliest record of "The Sleeping Lion Theory" is Ceng Jize 1887' s China Sleeps First and Wakes Later. This paper is Ceng Jize's paper "China, Sleep and Awakening" published in English in Asia Quarterly, London, when he was British and Russian Ilango Minister. This paper aims at expounding his personal views on domestic and foreign affairs and the policies of big countries towards China. Ceng Jize, the second son of Zeng Guofan, was a famous westernization figure and diplomat in the late Qing Dynasty, and was familiar with European affairs. But he is a foreigner after all, and when he published this article, Napoleon had died for 66 years, and the article itself was a popular political article, talking about China affairs. The sleeping lion theory is just a comparison, and although the article mentioned the sleeping lion theory, it didn't mention Napoleon, let alone put the patent of the sleeping lion theory on Napoleon's head-from this article, it was translated into classical Chinese by the author himself.

"The Sleeping Lion Theory" is very popular in China, and was published by Liang Qichao on 1899. This article, which was later included in Restaurant Collection, mentioned the "sleeping lion", but the "sleeping lion" mentioned in this article is not comparable with China, but the so-called "Frankenstein monster", that is, it looks like a lion, but actually a mechanical doll with rusty clockwork. Liang Qichao compared it to a huge and decadent China, and clearly pointed out that this theory originated from Ceng Jize. 1903, the revolutionary army in Zou Rong called the China Revolution "Dancing with the Millennium", and Chen Tianhua, who is equally famous with Zou Rong, compared China to a sleeping lion in his last book, the unfinished realistic/fantasy novel The Roar of Lions. 1905, the alliance founded the magazine "Wake Up the Lion" in Japan, and since then, the theory of "sleeping lion" has become popular.

Because Ceng Jize and Liang Qichao were both taboo names of revolutionaries at that time, some people with a will deliberately put the sleeping lion theory on foreigners. Jiangsu magazine, founded by Jiangsu students studying in Japan in Tokyo 1903, first gave this patent to Bismarck, a famous "hot-blooded prime minister" in Germany at that time, saying that he "has not awakened the sleeping lion in the East for decades". This famous epigram was sent to "a member of the British House of Commons", "some westerner", "westerner" and "William the Great". And it is the first time that Hu Shi explicitly named it after Napoleon. 19 15 In March, he wrote an explanation for the Sleeping Beauty Song written at the end of the year before last, saying that "Napoleon the Great tasted the sleeping lion." However, Hu Shi himself did not agree with the metaphor of "sleeping lion", thinking that "sleeping beauty" was more appropriate, and said that "the world has been arguing for this language for a hundred years", which shows that "Napoleon's sleeping lion theory" was what he heard. From 19 10 to 19 17, Hu Shi has been studying in the United States, which shows this statement. Napoleon may have talked about China, but the history is unknown.