The Shiji tells of the doctor Bian Que visiting Qi. He told Duke Huan: you have an illness in the skin; leave it and it will go deeper. The Duke: I'm not ill. Once he left, the Duke told his people: doctors love profit, they want credit for curing the healthy.
Five days later: it's in your blood now. I'm not ill, said the Duke, displeased. Five days later: it's in your gut. The Duke didn't answer. Five days later Bian Que caught sight of the Duke, turned and walked out.
Bo Ya played the qin; Zhong Ziqi knew how to listen. If Bo Ya had high mountains in mind, Ziqi said: towering, like Mount Tai. If flowing water: vast, like the great rivers. Whatever Bo Ya was thinking, Ziqi caught it.
Qin had Zhao's capital under siege. Lord Pingyuan set off to win an alliance with Chu and wanted 20 retainers. He found 19. Mao Sui offered to be the 20th. Pingyuan: three years here and I've heard nothing of you. A worthy man is like an awl in a bag; the point shows at once.
Mao Sui: then put me in the bag today. Had I been in it sooner, the whole thing would have come through, not just the tip. The other 19 traded looks and smiled. In Chu the talks ran from sunrise to noon without a decision.
From the Liezi: two huge mountains, Taixing and Wangwu, blocked a 90-year-old man's way, so every trip out took the long road round. He called his family together: let's flatten them. His wife asked where the earth and rock would go. Into the Bohai Sea, they said.
So he led the sons and grandsons who could carry loads, breaking rock and hauling it off in baskets. One round trip took from winter to summer. A clever old man laughed at him. He sighed: when I die, my sons go on, then theirs, and theirs. The mountains won't grow.
Yang Zhu's neighbor lost one sheep and sent a whole search party. They came back without it: forks in the road, and forks off the forks. Yang Zhu didn't smile all day. A visitor later put it this way: too many forks lose the sheep; too many methods lose the learner his life.
A man in Qi was so afraid the sky would fall and the earth give way he stopped eating and sleeping. A friend explained: the sky is just piled-up air, the earth just piled-up clods. You breathe the one and walk the other all day. The man was overjoyed. So was the friend.
From Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio: a villager is selling sweet pears in a market. A ragged Daoist begs for one and gets cursed at. A shop hand buys him a pear. He eats it, keeps the seed, digs a hole, plants it and asks for hot water to pour on.
Lord Mengchang was held in Qin. The king's favorite would get him freed for a white fox-fur coat, but he'd given his only one to the king. A lowly retainer, a petty thief, said he could get it. At night he slipped into the palace storehouse like a dog and brought the coat back.
Qin offered Zhao 15 cities for one jade disc. The envoy Lin Xiangru carried it to the Qin court and watched the king pass it around to his ladies, with no word of cities. So he said: there's a flaw in it, let me show Your Majesty. The king handed it back.