At the Hongmen banquet, when Liu Bang left the tent, having been alerted to the plot against his life, he took his aide Fan Kuai with him. He said to the latter, "I did not take leave of my host. I must escape, but how can I simply depart so rudely?" Fan Kuai said, "A great cause should not be hampered by details or petty points of etiquette. Xiang Yu and his advisors are the knife and the chopping block, while we are the fish and the meat. So why stand on ceremony?" So Liu Bang left at once, together with Fan Kuai and three other men, making his way back to his own camp on foot.
Later, the phrase came to be used to describe the situation of being at the mercy of others.
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