“Confucius Gets Rekt By A Child,” a blatantly apocryphal anecdote but I do love glimpses into ancient childhood:
Once, they say, while Confucius was traveling with his disciples, they came across some children building a big sand castle right in the middle of the road. The children all scattered when they saw the oncoming carriage, except for one: Xiang Tuo, the smartest little boy in the world.
The driver hurriedly stopped the carriage and demanded to know why this little boy would not get out of the way. Xiang Tuo answered: “You approach my moats! Now tell me, do carriages go around castles, or are castles supposed to get out of the way of carriages?”
After getting a good look at the “castle,” Confucius chuckled. “Oh, what a clever child! I see you are wiser than most, so how about a little wager, some honest fun between young and old. I pose a riddle, you pose a riddle, the winner becomes the teacher and the loser becomes the disciple.”
“It’s a deal!”
Confucius asked: “How many stars are in the sky, how many grains grow upon the earth, how many hairs are in your eyebrows?”
Xiang Tuo answered “One skyful of stars, one cropsful of grains, one faceful of hairs. Now, sir, riddle me this: what water has no fish? What fire has no smoke? What tree has no leaf, and what flower has no stem?”
Confucius answered: “Every river, lake and sea has fish. All firewood gives off smoke when it burns. Whoever has seen a tree with no leaves, or a flower with no stem?”
Beaming, Xiang Tuo explained: “There’s no fish in a well. There’s no smoke coming off a firefly. Dead trees don’t have leaves! And snowflakes (‘snow flowers’) don’t have stems.”
Confucius conceded that the child was now his teacher, but Xiang Tuo asked if he could wash his hands off first before all this teaching stuff.
Translation mine, based on the version found in a book about the Three Character Classic by Hu Yuanyuan. (There are many variations of the story.) Art by Wang Lumin
