The Foolish Old Man Moves Mountains

An old man of nearly 90 stood at the door of his house, looked at the two mountains blocking the way in front of him, and decided to clear them away.

Not to go around them. Not to cut a small path along their feet. To clear those two mountains away for good.

Anyone hearing this far thinks the old man has lost his wits. The people in the old book thought so. The person who tells this story thought so too. But hold that thought, because the best part is the old man's answer to the man who laughs at him.

The old book says the two mountains were called Taihang and Wangwu. They were 700 li across. The li is a traditional Chinese measure of distance. They stood 10,000 ren high. The ren was an old measure of height, about eight feet by the old Chinese reckoning. But 10,000 ren is not meant literally. The old writers themselves noted it was only a way of saying the mountains were so high that no one bothered to count anymore.

The two mountains lay south of the land of Jizhou and north of the land of Heyang. And the old man's house stood right there, facing the mountains.

His trouble was very concrete, not grand at all. The northern slope of the mountains sealed off the road. Leaving home meant going around. Coming home meant going around too. Going to market, visiting friends, carrying firewood, taking the children along, all of it meant going around. He had gone around like this his whole life, and he could see that his children and grandchildren would go around like this as well.

So one day he called the whole family to sit around him and told them what he had in mind. He wanted to put every pair of hands in the house to work and level those steep heights. Then they would open a straight road through to the south of the land of Yu, all the way to the southern bank of the Han River.

His wife was the first to speak plainly. She said that with the strength he had now, he could not even clear a small mound of earth. So what could he do with Taihang and Wangwu? Then she asked one more question, a very practical one, the kind anyone who runs a household would ask. If the mountains were dug up, where would the earth and stone go?

The others all answered at once that they would be dumped at the edge of the Bohai Sea.

And so the work began.

He took along three of his sons and grandsons who were strong enough to carry loads. They broke stone, turned the earth, and shoveled it into baskets woven of bamboo and grass, then carried them away on shoulder poles. There were no carts, no machines, nothing but a few pairs of shoulders and a few baskets.

One more person lent a hand, and this detail stays with anyone who hears it once. Nearby lived a widow whose small son had just reached the age of losing his milk teeth. When he saw people carrying earth, the boy came skipping over to help however he could. A child whose new teeth had not yet all grown in, setting out to clear two mountains.

Then there was the distance. From the foot of the mountains to the edge of the Bohai Sea, carrying one basket of earth there and coming back took a whole turn of the seasons, from heat to cold. They set out while the weather was still warm and returned when it had turned completely. One trip. One basket of earth.

By now, the old man really does look foolish.

The people in the old book thought so too. At a bend of the river nearby lived another old man named Zhisou. The two names sound strange side by side, because Yugong means the foolish old man, and Zhisou means the wise old man. The old book calls them that from the very start, and the whole story fits inside those two names.

Zhisou laughed and tried to stop the old man. He said that the last strength of old age could not break a single hair of the mountain, so how could all that earth and stone ever be cleared?

It sounds very reasonable. If you count only by the strength of one man and by the years one man has left, Zhisou is entirely right.

The old man let out a long sigh. Then he answered, and the whole story keeps coming back to that answer.

He said Zhisou's mind was too stubborn, so stubborn it could not be made to see, worse even than the widow and the little child carrying earth out there. Then he went on. Even if he died, he would still have sons. Sons would have grandsons. Grandsons would have sons. His children and their children would follow one another without end.

But the mountains could not grow any taller.

So why could they not be leveled?

Zhisou had nothing to say in reply.

Look again at what the old man has just done. He never claimed to be stronger than the mountains. Nor did he hide that he had little time left to live. He only changed the way of counting. Zhisou measured two mountains against the life of one man, so the task looked absurd. The old man measured them against a whole line of people, so the task only looked long. The mountains were huge, but the mountains stood still. His family just kept growing.

The foolishness is in the name. The careful reckoning is in the man who was called a fool.

The old book goes on to tell that a spirit who held snakes in his hands heard about all this. Fearing the work would never stop, he reported it to the Lord of Heaven. The Lord of Heaven was moved by the old man's sincerity and ordered the two sons of the god Kua'e to come down and carry the two mountains away on their backs. One mountain was set down in Shuodong. The other was set down in Yongnan.

From then on, from the south of the land of Jizhou to the south of the Han River, not a single hill stood in the way anymore.

The tale ends there, in a very old Chinese book called the Liezi, in the chapter known as The Questions of Tang. The book is so old that people still debate when it took the shape it has today.

But the story itself traveled very far, and it came all the way to Vietnam.

In Vietnam, Yugong is called Ngu Công, and people say Ngu Công dời núi, the foolish old man moves mountains. They use the phrase as it is, with no need to translate or explain it. Parents say it to a child sitting in front of a thick stack of notebooks. Grown-ups say it to each other when they take on a task so big it is overwhelming just to look at. And it belongs to the same family as a saying every Vietnamese child knows from an early age: with steady work, an iron rod can be ground into a needle. Two sayings, one way of thinking. A huge iron rod, a tiny needle, and in between, countless hours of grinding. Two mountains 10,000 ren high, one bamboo basket, and in between, countless trips under the shoulder pole.

The old man still stands at the door of his house, before two mountains 10,000 ren high, a bamboo basket in his hand.

He did not measure the work by the basket. He measured it by the one thing Zhisou forgot to count: the mountains could not grow any taller.