After becoming emperor, Liu Bang of the Han Dynasty wanted to honor his father, the Grand Emperor, and ensure his peaceful retirement. He repeatedly sent letters urging his father to move from their hometown of Feng County to the capital. Unable to refuse his son's sincere filial piety, the Grand Emperor finally relented and relocated to the capital.
Liu Bang lavished the old man with countless new gifts, yet he remained perpetually downcast.
"Father, why are you so troubled and restless every day?" Liu Bang was puzzled, not knowing what his father truly needed. "I'm fine, son. Attend to your state affairs." The old man, unwilling to hurt his son's feelings, always brushed it off.
Later, Liu Bang secretly inquired among his father's servants and learned the truth: the old man had grown accustomed to his hometown of Feng County and missed everything he loved there—no chickens or dogs, no familiar faces to chat with, and he couldn't even find his way around outside, so he just sat at home idle, nearly bored into illness.
Liu Bang thought: So that's it, no wonder the old man was so down—older people always long for the past.
So Liu Bang immediately ordered his men to build a "New Feng" in the capital, modeled after his hometown Feng County. To bring joy to his father in old age, Liu Bang even relocated the residents of Feng County, including their chickens and dogs.
The new Feng was built exactly like Feng County. The residents of Feng County were astonished: "The capital looks just like our hometown!"
The Grand Emperor was overjoyed, especially when he saw his beloved chickens and dogs recognizing their own home, grinning from ear to ear as if he had returned to his hometown of Feng County. Gradually, the Grand Emperor's complexion grew rosy.
Later, the idiom "Chickens and Dogs in Xinfeng" came to mean feeling as familiar and happy in a foreign place as if it were one's hometown.
Source: *Book of Han*, "Annals of Emperor Gao"
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "鸡犬新丰" came to describe feeling as familiar and happy in a foreign place as if it were one's hometown.