During the Eastern Jin Dynasty, five ethnic minorities—the Xiongnu, Xianbei, Di, Qiang, and Jie—rose in rebellion against Han rule in northern China, an event historically known as the "Five Barbarians' Uprising."
During the Western Jin Dynasty, a Jie tribesman named Shi Le once traveled to Luoyang as a child with his tribe to sell goods and also worked as a hired laborer for others.
During the final years of Emperor Hui of Jin's reign, a famine struck Bingzhou, and the twenty-something Shi Le was sold by the provincial governor Sima Teng to a man named Shi Huan in Shandong as a slave. Seeing Shi Le's striking appearance and extraordinary demeanor, Shi Huan treated him with great favor, soon freeing him from slavery and making him a tenant farmer.
Later, Shi Le gathered Wang Yang, Guo Ao, and 16 others as his core members, joining forces with Ji Sang to launch an uprising. After the rebellion failed, he defected to the Xiongnu chieftain Liu Yuan and became one of his top generals.
In 304 AD, Liu Yuan declared himself emperor and founded the Han regime; a few years later, Liu Yuan died, and his son Liu Cong and nephew Liu Yao succeeded him in turn, with Liu Yao even changing the dynasty's name to Zhao (known historically as Former Zhao). At this time, Shi Le heavily employed the Han Chinese strategist Zhang Bin as his advisor, allying with local Han Chinese strongmen to develop into a regional separatist power.
In 318 AD, the warlord Shi Le wiped out the Western Jin's last northern strongholds. The following year, he broke ties with his former overlord, the Former Zhao, declared himself emperor, and kept the name Zhao—later known as the Later Zhao. Among the Sixteen Kingdoms of the Five Barbarians, the Later Zhao was generally considered the most powerful.
During a banquet with his ministers, Shi Le once boasted, "If I lived in the same era as Han Gaozu, Liu Bang, I admit I could not match him—I would serve under him like Han Xin and Peng Yue, fighting on the battlefield. But if I faced an emperor like Han Guangwu, Liu Xiu, I would compete with him for supremacy in the Central Plains. Who knows whose hands the deer would fall into then?"
Later, the idiom "Who Will Claim the Deer" came to symbolize which faction would seize state power, or metaphorically, who would achieve final victory.
Source: *Book of Jin*, "Biography of Shi Le, Part Two"
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "鹿死谁手" came to describe which faction would seize state power, or metaphorically, who would achieve final victory.