Chen Sheng came from extreme poverty. His family's home was so dilapidated that a rope-tied wooden board served as the door, and a broken jar set into the wall was called a window. He himself worked as a hired farmhand, struggling to survive.
That year, Chen Sheng was conscripted to guard the frontier alongside over nine hundred others. On the march, relentless rains turned the roads into muddy quagmires, exhausting the soldiers and making it impossible to reach their destination on time. Under the harsh laws of the Qin Dynasty, missing the deadline meant execution. Unwilling to endure such tyranny any longer, Chen Sheng and his companions rose up in revolt against the Qin regime.
The rebel soldiers had nothing—no weapons, no supplies. So they cut branches as swords and raised bamboo poles as banners. The people, long suffering under the Qin dynasty's brutal rule, flocked to Chen Sheng's call the moment he raised his arm. Even the nobles of the former six kingdoms seized the chance to rise against Qin. After years of war, the dynasty was finally overthrown.
"Jie" means to raise high. The idiom "Jie Gan Er Qi" means to raise bamboo poles as flags, signifying uprising against the old regime.
Source: *On the Faults of Qin* by Jia Yi
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "揭竿而起" came to describe how to raise bamboo poles as flags, signifying uprising against the old regime.