Ancient Chinese Stories: The Tale Of Duke Mu And The Horse Eaters

This ancient Chinese story today which is about Duke Mu of the Zhou Dynasty. This time I will be translating it myself.

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Duke Mu of Qin once went out and lost his swiftest horse, and he then went to look for it himself. He saw that some people killed the horse, and were eating the meat. Duke Mu said to them, “That was my swiftest horse!” Then the men got frightened and immediately stood up. Duke Mu then said, “I have heard that if one eats the meat of a fast horse without having some ale will kill them,” and then Duke Mu gave the men some ale one by one. Those who killed the horse drank the ale and then left ashamed. 3 years after this incident, The State of Jin attacked the state of Qin and Duke Mu was under seige. Those who in the past ate the horse meat said to each other, “We can go and die and repay the the grace of drinking ale with our horse meat.” The seige then had ended. Duke Mu in the end through this way overcame his challenges and was able to truimph over Jin. He Captered Duke Hui of Jin and then returned to his home. This is a situation where kindness was applied and good fortune was returned from it.

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Now in this ancient Chinese story we see the result of kindness pays off in the long run. I won’t lie I might not have done the same if I saw my best horse being eaten. Now, when I was translating the story, I didn’t see anything that would give an exact number of how many people were eating the horse but the main point of the story is that is better to be kind than mean. I have to say though this story is much nicer to read than hearing that old honey and fly cliche. I use the term ale for the chinese character for 酒, not wine because wine came into existence late on in Chinese History, the first form of alcoholic drink was some sort of ale like or beer substance made from wheat in the northern areas of China, so I feel ale is more appropiate.  This is probably the best ancient story you can find to show why being kind is better than being cold-hearted not only in ancient Chinese times, but for any time in the world.

This is a picture of Xi An with me in it. I took it in summer 2007 outside of the terracotta soldier archeological site.

Ancient Chinese Stories: The Farmer of Song and His Stump

Terracotta Soldiers In Xi An

 

Todays ancient Chinese story I bring I have from the great volume one book of Irene Bloom; “Sources of Chinese Tradition from Earliest Times to 1600.” This Chinese story shows the view of the Han Fei Zi on Confucianism and is a small snippet from his ideas on, ”The Five Vermin.”

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There was a farmer of Song who tilled the land,  and in his field was a stump. One day a rabbit, racing accross the field, bumped into the stump, broke its neck, and died. Thereupon the farmer laid aside his plow and took up watch beside the stump, hoping that he would get another rabbit in the same way. But he got no more rabbits, and instead became the laughingstock of Song. Those who think they can take the ways of the ancient kings and use them to govern the people of today all belong in the category of stump-watchers!…

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So this ancient Chinese Story I always rather enjoyed when I was reading it. Now Han Fei zi was a legalist who was originally a student of the Confucian master Xun Zi. He liked the idea of law governing society, but he hated ideas of Confucianism seeing them as too stagnant and old fashioned, and this of course is so well shown in the very last line of the text. Now he was more of a supporter of the Daoist belief that all things are in eternal flux. As a result, the people of a new age need a new method of ruling. So while Confucianism in the long run did succeed rather well, it was ideas of those like the Han Fei Zi which are more militaristic or Legalist points of view that unified China at the end of the Zhou dynasty and began the reign (well, really short reigned, about 15 years) of the Qin dynasty. Of course, the methods were so harsh that the ancient Chinese people couldn’t take it anymore, rebelled and the Han dynasty ended up taking power. To make sure such extreme governance wasn’t done again, The Han Dynasty was the first official Confucian run dynasty. While there is much more in the text on The Five Vermin, I think this little snippet is very brief, entertaining and excellent in explaining his main point of being anti-Confucian. Later on perhaps, I will show other parts of this ancient Chinese text and try to explain their signifigance in a simple manner.

This picture I took in summer 2007.

Ancient Chinese Story: Environment, Not Heredity

 

This is a story I had to translate for my classical Chinese class, for now I am using the books translation by Paul Rozer’s book: A New Practical Primer For Literary Chinese. This is a text pertaining to the well known Master Yan of Qi from the late 6th century b.c.e. during the Zhou Dynasty.
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Master Yan was about to go on a Mission to Chu. The king of Chu heard of this and he said to his courtiers, “Yan Ying is a practiced rhetorician of Qi. Just now he is coming, and I wish to humiliate him. How?”
One Courtier replied, “For when he comes, I request we tie up a man. We will walk by your Majesty, and you will say, ‘Who is he?’ We will reply, ‘He is a man of Qi.’ Your majesty will say, ‘What is he being tried for?’ and we will say, ‘He is being tried for robbery.’”
Master Yan arrived, and the king of Chi gave Master Yan ale. When the banquet had progrssed for a while, two guards tied up a person and came to the king.
The king said, “What has the bound man done?”
They replied, he is a man of Qi and he is being tried for robbery.”
The king regarded Master yan and said, “Are the people of Qi indeed good at Robbery?”
Master Yan withdrew from his mat and replied, “I have heard that when an orange tree grows south of the Huai then it becomes an orange tree, but when it grows north of the Huai it becomes a zhi tree. Only the leaves are similar; the taste of their fruit is not the same. Why is it so? The water and the terrain are different. Now a commoner is born and grows up in Qi and doesn’t steal, but he enters Chu and steals. No doubt it is the water and terrain of Chu that makes a commoner good at stealing?”
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So this ancient Chinese tale of these two people arguing is probably one of the oldest arguements of nature versus nurture. Originally I didn’t notice this just because I thought of how clever it was in this particular Chinese story how Master Yan used the kings remark to switch it and insult him back. In this case though, it seemed that nurture won the arguement, and nature was shunned. It is interesting simply because the arguements of these ancient Chinese were always so philosophical yet wittily put.

This picture is from the Great Wall when I went in summer 2007

Painting Legs On A Snake- An Ancient Chinese Tale of Drinking

This is the famous Chinese idiom 畫蛇添足; in English, painting legs on a snake.

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Once upon a time a group of friends went out to have some wine. There were a lot of them, but not so much to drink, there was only one bowl left. Who can drink this bowl?
Someone said, “Everyone should paint a snake and the person who paints one quickest get’s to drink this last bowl of wine, how does that sound?”
Everyone answered, “OK”
They all began to paint. There was one young man who drew his snake faster than everyone else and saw that they were still painting, only he was finished.
He happily said, “They all paint too slowly, I still have lots of time, I’ll add some feet to my snake”
At this time, some one nearby in a loud voice said, “I finished my snake, this last bowl of wine should be given to me”
The young boy heard this and at once said anxiously, “You did not paint as finish as early as I did, I finished much earlier than you did. Look, I even added feet to my snake. This bowl should be mine!”
The other man laughed and said, “Everyone knows snakes don’t have legs. You added legs to this snake, so it is no longer a snake, therefore the first person to finish painting a snake was me.”
Everyone said, “He’s right, this last bowl of wine is his.”
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I translated this from a modern Chinese (bai hua) translation from the ancient Chinese story I found in my old Chinese textbook. Everyone stresses not overdoing things, but this Chinese story shows how a kid only lost his drink because of overdoing and in part to his arroance. While I do love my Chinese stories, I can see arrogance as a problem for anyone, but in this case I prefer to focus on overdoing things or doing that which is superfluous. I see this all the time as a rule for all groups from writers to SEO people; don’t overdo it or you will be screwed. This story may be ancient, but still so true in its lesson.

This picture up top for everyone to know in case interested was taken outside of Beijing in summer 2007.

The Ancient Chinese Story of Mi Zi Xia, and What it Shows of Sexuality in Ancient China.

So this is an ancient Chinese story from some time in the Zhou Dynasty which was over 2,000 years ago from the 8th century B.C.E. till the 3rd century B.C.E . I will give you the translation provided by Paul Rozer in the book A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese. When I first read this old Chinese story, I was rather surprised needless to say.

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Mizi Xia was loved by the Lord of Wei. The law of the state of Wei was that anyone who drove the Lords’s carriage unlawfully would be punished by having his feet cut off. Mizi Xia’s mother was ill; someone heard of this, and at night went to inform him. Mizi Xia drove the lord’s carriage without authorization and went out. The Lord heard of this and thought him worthy. He said, “How filial! For the sake/reason of his mother, he committed a crime worthy of havinghis feet cut off!” The lord was strolling in his orchard. Mizi Xia ate a peach and found it sweet, so he didn’t finish it and offered [the rest] to the Lord. The Lord said, “He loves me and disregards it with taste!” When Mizi Xia’s look faded and [the Lord's] love slackened, he offended the Lord. The Lord said, ”This man indeed once usurped the use of my carriage, and moreover he once fed me with the remains of a peach!” Therefore, though Mizi Xia’s conduct did not necessarily change from before, the reason why he was first considered worthy and afterward offended was because of the change that arose from love to hate.

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This to me is really interesting, before this I had only known of a few emperors who would have affairs with eunuchs among the ancient Chinese. In modern China, homosexuality or bisexuality would not be so accepted. As I did my research, I realized that many rulers were bisexual and often had affairs with both women and men. So often the scholars would not say that homosexuality was wrong in ancient China, but the king’s or ruler’s over grown sexual desire. This Chinese story does show us something else as well; sometimes doing the right thing can be difficult because sometimes, in even today’s world (perhaps more so) it still seems if you do the right thing, you will be shunned for it or punished unfairly. If one really looks at these ancient Chinese stories of any time, they can see in those classical times many interesting arguements which are still seen to this day.

Let me know what you guys think.