| Cao Bao | |||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 曹豹 | ||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 曹豹 | ||||||
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Cao Bao (died 196) was a vassal serving under the warlord Tao Qian during the late Han Dynasty period of Chinese history. At one time when Cao Cao invaded Xu Province, Cao Bao met Xiahou Dun for a duel but ended up being forced to retreat by powerful gale. Cao Bao then later went on to serve under Liu Bei.
Once, Liu Bei received an imperial edict to attack Yuan Shu in Huainan. Liu left for Huainan with Guan Yu and left Zhang Fei in charge of Xu Province. Zhang Fei was not effective in running Xu Province and he only managed military affairs, leaving the rest to Chen Deng.
Once, Zhang Fei decided to abstain from drinking wine, and made a decision to have a drinking session on a night and then abstain from drinking from then onwards. He invited all officials in Xu Province to the banquet and made each of them drink. When Cao Bao's turn came, he refused to drink wine, saying that he had never drank wine before and will never drink wine. Zhang Fei forced Cao to drink one cup, and then tried to force him to drink again but Cao stubbornly refused. Zhang was furious and ordered Cao Bao to be severely beaten up, and Cao Bao begged Zhang Fei to let him off on account of his son-in-law Lü Bu.
Zhang Fei had detested Lü Bu from the beginning and when he heard that Cao Bao was Lü's father-in-law, he said "Good! Beating you up is like beating up Lü Bu!" Hence, Cao Bao was severely beaten up and later he was angry with Zhang Fei and conspired with Lü Bu to take over Xu Province. Zhang Fei was drunk when Lü Bu led his troops to take control of Xu Province and could not fight and had to retreat.