An Illusory Snake in a Goblet and A Walk Learner in Handan
2 min readAn Illusory Snake in a Goblet
In Jin Dynasty there was a man named Yue Guang who was fond of drinking alcohol. One day, he invited a friend to his house to drink together. Suddenly, his friend saw the reflection of a snake swimming in the goblet.
He got so much frightened that he took ill on bed after getting home. Neither any doctor nor any medicine could cure his illness. Yue Guang came to see him and asked about the cause of his disease. When he got to know the cause, he pulled his friend from the bed immediately and took him to his house.
Yue Guang made his friend sit where he used to, pouring a goblet of alcohol for him, and asked him,”Is there any snake reflection in the goblet?”There was still a “snake reflection” in the goblet! Yue casually took away the bow hanging on the wall. This time, the “snake reflection”disappeared.”So it was the bow reflection that was in the goblet!”His friend at once got well from his illness.
A Walk Learner in Handan
During the Warring States Period, Handan, the capital of the State of Zhao, was famous for people’s walking style. They walked in vigorous elegant strides. People in other places admired them very much. They thought the Handanners’ way of walking was the best under the heaven.A young lad in the town of Shouling, the state of Yan, heard about that and went along way there to learn the strides.
Arriving in the town of Handan, the young man set about watching how the people there walked in the street. He was well indulged in the study all day long; sometimes he followed one this way and sometimes another that way.
As time passed, the young man felt more and more worried because he had not learned to walk as the natives there. And to make things worse, he found himself unable to walk in his own way in the end. So he had no choice but to crawl home.
