You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
And coming up, today we continue the special series on Zhuangzi, about one of the most influential philosophers of ancient China.
Who was Zhuangzi?
And what life lessons can we still draw from his centuries-old wisdom?
In this series, we'll explore some of the most fascinating stories from Zhuangzi and reflect on what they reveal about how we live, think and choose.
On today's show, we bring you the story Cook Ding, the expert ox butcher.
It's a story about learning and practice.
Lord Wenhui was breathless as he watched Cook Ding cutting upon an ox.
He had never known that his royal chef was a master of blade.
Every touch he made was of subtlety and accuracy of God knows how.
His knife knew the ways into the bones and joints, yet just narrowly avoiding them.
Wherever the knife went, flesh fell from the bones.
Kup Ting slithered his knife gracefully over the scene, as if his hand and blades were dancing in perfect rhythm.
Zip, zoop, a shoulder is off.
Zip, zoop, the feet are apart.
And zip, zoop, This is marvelous.
How did you become such an expert?
Cook Ding lay down his knife and explained that it was not just about skills.
This goes beyond mere skills.
The first time I did the job, all I could see was the ox itself.
After three years, I no longer saw the whole ox but different body parts.
And now I look at the ox with my mind, not my eyes.
I go along with the anatomy of oxen, cut into the gaps between the muscles and bones and guide the knife through the huge hollows between the bone joints.
So my knife knows the way or the different ways, and never really touches the smallest ligament or tendon, not to mention bone joints.
The Lord looked at the knife with curiosity.
Your knife is so shiny.
Is it new or did you just sharpen it?
To his surprise, the answer was no.
A good cook changes his knife once a year because he cuts.
An ordinary cook changes his knife once a month because he hacks.
There are knives wear and tear.
But look at mine.
I've had it for 19 years and have cut up thousands of oxen with it.
And yet the blade is as sharp and shiny as new.
It's not difficult.
There are spaces between the joints and plenty of room for a thin blade to get through.
Even if it has been used for 19 years and have cut up thousands of oxen with it, its blade is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.
Lord Wanhui became more interested.
You really are a master cook who can do the job to perfection.
What have you found difficult about carving an ox?
And how do you deal with these difficulties?
Whenever my knife comes to a complicated part of the ox, I tell myself to watch out and be careful.
I keep my eyes on what I'm doing, work very slowly and move the knife with the greatest subtlety until flop.
The whole thing comes apart like a clot of earth crumbling to the ground.
The king was inspired by Cookding's words.
Excellent.
Now I learned how to care for life.
Know the thing and know the way to deal with it.
Cookding had a superb understanding of the body structure of an animal.
He could avoid the technical difficulties and find gaps to get through.
Practice makes perfect, thus mastering the objective rules of doing anything and achieving craftsmanship.
This is also the same to life attitudes.
Avoid conflicts and struggles and protect ourselves.
That too requires caution. wisdom.
That was Cook Ding, the expert ox butcher from our special series Zhuangzi.
Coming up next.
Yushun and Tianlu will share their own interpretations and takeaways from this story.
What's up, everybody?
This is Yushun from Roundtable.
This is Tianlu from the Beijing Hour.
So from this story, I think one sentence that has always been lingering in my mind when I was listening to the story was practice makes perfect.
The story.
I think it is illustrating that mastery in many fields comes from years of practice and developing a deep understanding of the subject matter.
In this story.
Cook Ding's progression from seeing the ox as a whole to understanding its anatomy and cutting with precision shows that expertise is achieved through a lot of dedication and experience.
Here's what I was thinking because, you know, Cook Ding became thoroughly familiar with the parts of an ox through his constant practice.
And I've always been thinking you know the Chinese singing.
It takes 10 years of work behind the scenes to make a minute of performance on stage right.
Um, I think you heard that.
Yeah.
So yeah, just like a lot of these musicians and pianists, for example, through long hours of practice, can smoothly play complex pieces.
For example, famous pianists like Lang Lang started practicing from a really young age and um, We know that a lot of instruments if you, if you would like to learn instruments and you would like to master an instrument, you need to spend a lot of years on it.
And you need a saying called which means you need to learn it from a really, really young age.
And I think that is also reflecting the fact that you know three through continuous practice, if you would like to achieve that kind of world-class performance levels.
Continuous practice is kind of necessary.
Of course, we know that this is not that easy.
So there have been many idioms and stories in China since ancient times that emphasize perseverance.
And I believe these stories share a common theme, which is to involve long-time practice.
I know, but this level of mastery, you said, can have some limitations.
Even though Cook Ding's story and Long Long's story we mentioned before shows how practice can make you an expert, those skills might not fit into today's world.
For example, let's say, a traditional photographer.
They can practice their skills a lot and to become a very professional one.
But the world is changing so quickly and nowadays photographers even need to know how to edit the photos rather than just taking the photos.
If they don't learn digital photography and editing, they could fall behind.
And the society is developing so fast, like what I said before, even the photographers who knows the digital skills and editing very well?
It doesn't mean that they are very competitive in this kind of industry.
Yes, I understand.
Of course, modern society is different from the era in the story, right?
But similarly, if we consider, you know, the refinement of a single skill, which is photo shooting or videography,
It also requires continuous progress and practice, right?
Yeah, but what I mean is we can't just rely on one skill.
Nowadays, another new type of studio becomes quite trendy.
I can see many fancy studios in the shopping malls with delicate decorations.
Photographers there even help you to do makeup.
They help you pick up the right clothing and taking photos, of course.
And they even have very good Photoshop skills.
So basically, this kind of studio is very attractive and actually I think it's more attractive and more trendy than the traditional one.
So it makes more money.
I mean, comparing with the studios that just take photos and edit them.
So while being really good at one thing is great, but I think having a mix of skills and knowledge is more important today than rather than solely relying on one skill, especially when everything is changing so quickly nowadays.
I get what you mean.
Let's just talk about photography industry.
If your technique, I was thinking, is superb at the most critical step, which is shooting, photo shooting or video taking, then I believe, Um all of these preparation or post-production services or editing that you said, I think these will be much easier right.
Um, because it is kind of important that you know how to do the lighting, know how to do the angle.
So in this way, of course, it is very important that you do all of these preparation and have good looking clothes.
But when you are having a good skill of photoshooting I think maybe sometimes even you wear ugly clothes you can look better with a good photographer.
But anyway, I think this is very similar to, I think, the second philosophy that I gleaned from this story, which is, you know, the idea of getting the simplicity of things.
You know, by mastering the underlying principles of things, one can increase their efficiency.
So in this story, cookding's method of cutting the ox with such ease and fluidity reflects the philosophy that you know, mastery often involves simplifying complex tasks.
Right um, his approach reduces the ox to its, you know, fundamental components is actually reflecting that mastery often comes from making the complex seem simple.
But what he dealt with is just an ox.
It's not that complex.
Of course it is complex.
There are so many bones and, you know, how to use the knives to cut it and make it sharpen as new.
It is of course we're talking about just cutting ox, but it is kind of the philosophy or idea that can be reflected in modern society, I think.
But I think in modern society the problems we face nowadays are way more complicated than just dealing with an ox.
Okay, let's make an example in the modern society.
I was thinking mathematics.
So normally, mathematic teachers, they will have that kind of skill or this is kind of the process.
They help students gradually master their knowledge by breaking down all of these complex, no matter its formula or course, content into smaller and more easily understood parts I remember in my middle school you know the lawn math questions we did often essentially used the same formulas actually right you know by breaking down these problems and extracting the you know underlying principles whether it was one formula or multiple we we just we could solve them all by just looking at the question and then get the core formula that is going to be used.
So I was thinking the method makes the learning process smoother and reduce the cognitive burden on students.
And in this way students can actually grasp and master this kind of way to learn to solve the mathematical questions.
Also in this way.
Similarly, I believe this also demonstrates, you know, the importance of mastering the underlying or the core principles of things.
Okay, I can understand your logic.
But if we just simplify complicated things or break them down into simpler or smaller parts to complete a task or a huge project, I think that's a bit too idealistic.
We need more innovation, creativity, and maybe an open mind.
Like, We can't just simplify things.
Sometimes the problems we face are way more complicated, like what I said before.
And that's why I think we need to try divergent thinking and breakthroughs.
Understanding and managing these complexities, rather than just simplifying them, might be the key to true proficiency.
Let's say I love lychees a lot and I used to buy them from the supermarket and But they were really fresh.
So I have to pick up them very, very carefully to avoid the rotten ones.
Okay.
And recently a friend from Shenzhen sent me a box of lychee which is super, super fresh and tasty and sweet and juicy.
So I was surprised.
And I asked her, I mean, how can you get like this kind of very fresh lychee?
And she said Shenzhen is famous for this kind of fruit.
And in the past local farmers there would worry the lychee season actually because, For example, when they grow the leeches and do the harvesting and they just sell them nearby or they have to sell them to the supermarket.
So the destiny of the leeches is wait the customers to come and to buy them.
Okay.
And the process took too long.
So the freshness of the leeches already disappear.
Oh.
So they try to break the traditional methods and try to use the social media platforms, like doing live streaming.
And with the live streaming the people can order online and the farmers just dispatch the products directly and keeping the leeches very fresh.
And they can also increase the sales of the leeches.
And the farmers also break the geographic limits through live streaming or online sales.
The lychees can be sold nationwide.
With all of these cold chain deliveries, right?
Yeah, not only nationwide, even internationally.
This shift has expanded their market and increased the value of their products.
That's why I think simplicity is not that suitable for the sales of agricultural products.
If the farmers just simply focus on growing and selling them locally nearby and don't have some divergent thinking, the traditional way will not work as well as in the past.
On the opposite.
They learned to adapt to the fast changing society.
For example, they learned the new technologies and learned how to use the social media platforms, how to do online sales.
They also learned to manage the complexity of our society.
So that's why i think innovation and creativity are more important, as expanding new sales channels can bring the farmers more benefits.
To achieve the true proficiency, We need diverse and flexible strategies to navigate the complex environments, rather than just simplifying the environments.
I get it.
But actually getting things from complexity to simplicity also require innovation and creativity, to be honest.
But I believe you know, integrating all of these live streaming and international or domestic logistics.
It also requires innovation, every single step, to be, you know, simplified and focus on the quality of their service.
So I was thinking, you know, by breaking down each step, this is the way that you can offer better quality of service to your customers.
Of course, simplicity is important.
But for example, let's go back to Cookadink story.
It simplifies things and make them seem very easy to handle.
But it might ignore the diversity and complexity of modern life and work.
And, let's say, entrepreneurs.
They might focus on one product or service, but the market demands are constantly changing.
So if they don't follow the steps or keep up with the changing society, they might fall behind.
For example, let's say the Apple, many people know they produce iPhone, right?
But they don't just produce iPhone.
They also have MacBook.
They also have iPad, Apple Watch, and... Vision Pro.
Yeah, Vision Pro, which I think is very cool, actually.
Yeah, of course.
And let's look at Huawei.
They don't just sell mobile phones. laptops.
Nowadays, they even sell electric cars, home appliances and everything.
Yes, yes.
So I think simplicity, of course, is good.
But simplistic approaches might not yield the best results.
Like, things need to be diversified so that they can develop better.
In this way, I think what we are discussing are all connected and intertwined in some way.
Yes, like you said, it's intertwined.
So simplicity and complexity are both very important to us.
So we can try to use different ways to solve the problems.
Right.
Sometimes it is only by confronting complexity head on and considering problems comprehensively that we can uncover the essence and the simplicity of things right.
And of course this requires, I think, the investment of time, energy and reflection, and also it necessitates innovation and awareness to adapt to the times.
That also brings us to the end of today's discussion.
As we conclude our conversation, we also want your opinions, or perhaps What lessons did you draw from this story?
We encourage you to continue this discussion and stay tuned for more thought-provoking topics.
That was Yusheng and Tianlu discussing their takeaways from the story Cook Ding, the Expert Ox Butcher, as part of our Zhuangzi series.
If you liked this story and want to explore more on Chinese philosophy, simply search Sage and Youth Debating Zhuangzi's Tao on your favorite podcast platform.
That brings us to the end of today's Roundtable.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on our topics today, so leave us a comment wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, or send us an email to roundtablepodcast at qqcom.
Thanks for tuning in.
You can always find us at Apple Podcasts by searching Roundtable China.
I'm Steve and we'll see you next time.
