If you're listening to Roundtable, I'm Steve Hatherly.
Coming up soon, 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.
In today's show, we bring you the story, The Young Man Who Imitated the Handan Walk.
Though it was written more than 2,000 years ago, its message feels surprisingly relevant today.
How graceful this man walks.
What a civilized person.
How elegant that old man walks.
He must be from a noble family.
A young man stood on the street of Handan. capital of the rich and powerful state of Zhao.
His eyes were focused on passers-by.
This man from the neighboring state of Yan had long been eager to act like an elegant person well-bred, with a good family background.
So he took a long journey to Handan.
There, he started imitating others.
He spotted on a person about his age as his first model.
When that man moved his left foot, he followed with his own left foot.
And then the right foot in the next step.
And then left again.
Then right again.
Trying very hard to do exactly the same.
Same pace.
Same angle.
Same length.
Same style.
Well, precisely same everything.
Soon he found it too hard to continue, as that young man had longer legs.
Instead of giving up, he turned to a young lady with a trendy walking style.
This too ended awkwardly, for he was not as slim as the lady.
Then a third model, an old gentleman for his slow and gentle jogging.
And then another, Yet another, yet another.
Nothing worked.
Instead, his leg felt rigid.
So were his knees, ankles and toes.
Even worse, his weird behavior attracted the attention of many others.
They stopped to stare at him with curiosity.
Some burst into laughter, pointing at him each step he took.
Oh, mine.
What is he doing?
That's really strange.
How funny.
Look at him.
Weirdo.
The man was embarrassed, but he didn't lose his focus.
Why can't I master the graceful way of walking like the Handan people?
Maybe I'm just too used to my original way of walking.
I have to abandon my own postures totally before I can learn new ways.
Yes, that must be it.
He started to learn to walk from scratch, thinking carefully about every step he took.
He practiced hard for months but his practice made not perfect but clumsy.
Worst of all, he ran out of money and had forgotten his own way of walking his legs.
What am I supposed to do?
How can I get home?
One day, people saw a man crawling on his hands and knees. he was on his way home.
Whether one should learn to master others' advantages or not.
Tronso believes that one should get on his own way.
If he blindly follows others' ways, he may forget what he knew before and lose his own identity without mastering others' advantages.
Everyone has his or her own strengthened advantages.
Nothing wrong with learning from others, but that must suit their actual conditions.
Never ever attempt to copy other models, regardless of your own advantages.
That's suicidal.
That was the young man who imitated the Handan Walk from the Chinese classic Zhuangzi.
Coming up next, Tianlu and Yunqi will share their own interpretations and takeaways from this story.
Hello everyone, this is Yunqi with Deep Dive.
This is Tianlu with the Beijing Hour.
So this story from Zhuang Zi.
In the story of Handan Xue Bu, you see someone with an elegant walk.
You try to copy their walking style.
Then you actually end up forgetting how you used to walk at the first place.
I think this is a very applicable story to the modern lives, because now, with the Internet, we have access to millions of elegant walks.
In the past, you have to see these type of elegant walks with your own eyes.
But now you just need to log in, open your phone, and the internet is filled with stories like this.
And that's why we shouldn't just keep this type of imitation after other people's success and the glamour of their life, because now you just have too many options.
You people would often end up losing their direction in this process of trying to imitate others.
And if you look at the how children, The younger generation dream about their future.
The kids.
They no longer want to be athlete or artist scientists, because I wanted to be a rocket scientist when I was a kid.
And now the dream for the younger generation, they want to be influencers, streamers.
And there's this poll from YouGovcom that says Now being an influencer has become the top dream job for teens aged between 13 and 17.
I think it's cool.
Yeah.
And the boys will have more interest in becoming a streamer because they like playing video games.
And so the Gen Z generation.
They are seeing influencer content creation as a more legitimate career.
And yeah, they would also be more inclined to pursue a full-time job if they can make a living from just making content and streaming and becoming an influencer.
But, just like the story from Handan, trying to learn from other people's walking style, and The content creators, the YouTubers, the Douyin vloggers that have become successful are usually I don't know the percentage, but usually one in perhaps tens of thousands of other competitors.
And the glamour of other people's lives don't mean you can just model yourself other theirs, and does not always lead to success.
And so, in this modern lifestyle, I think the story of Handan is more of a lesson to learn from, because this inundation, this flooding of information would often take our attention to the glamour of other people's lives.
And they are not always a good story, a good lesson for you to learn from.
It's true that we can't replicate every success story out there, but that doesn't mean we should ignore them entirely.
Of course, the world is developing so fast and there are countless examples of success already.
But I think we don't have to follow every trend.
We don't need to copy the entire playbook.
There's value in understanding what made others successful and then adapting those lessons to our own circumstances.
Learning from others is about picking the parts that work for us and applying them in a way that fits our unique situation.
For example, the programs like MBA courses, they teach students by analyzing successful companies.
It's not about copying every detail by seeing what worked or didn't work for companies in the past.
Students can make better decisions in their own careers.
So I think it's more about using their experiences to avoid making the same mistakes.
Like warren, buffett is often studied by investors for his success in the stock market.
While no one can copy his exact investment strategy, many investors have taken his principles, like the importance of long-term investing or buying undervalued stocks, and applying them in their own way.
So the point isn't to imitate him completely, but to learn from his wisdom and adjust it to fit our own goals and context.
Of course, I'm not saying that we shouldn't learn from others completely.
There's always something to learn from others.
I acknowledge that.
But the problem with that is that we often lose our own direction, our passion and enthusiasm at the first place by the distraction of how successful, how glamorous that other people's lives are look like.
Have you heard about this theory of 10,000 hours?
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, actually the theory from Malcolm Gladwell from his book Outliers that it will take 10000 hours Approximately.
It varies a lot from occupations to occupations.
And there are also experts that say it's more about the quality rather than the quantity of the time you invest.
But approximately, very roughly, you need to spend $10,000 to achieve mastery in a certain skill.
The glamour that we see is always the result, the end of those 10,000 hours.
And what we don't see is that before you achieve the end of the mastery there, you have to spend roughly 9999 hours of maybe tedious repetition, of practicing the basic skills.
And if you look at these videos, these very fun videos on the internet, they only show you the most attractive, the most engaging part of their lifestyle.
But what they don't show you is that behind that they often have to spend is behind that the daily life may not be as attractive as the part that they show you from their videos.
And during this process of achieving, of grinding through these 10000 hours to maybe to achieve your end of your 10000 hours, that's the easiest time and period to be distracted by someone else's success at the end of their 10000 hours.
And that's why, if you have found your passion and your direction in your own path, It's more important to stick with this path and to see through the end of your practices, to achieve your 10000 hours of practice, rather than picking on someone else's path.
What they didn't show you is the tedious work before the mastery, with all those efforts and time invested for this path.
You mean we need to spend more time on our own path to see whether we can achieve something.
Right.
Yeah, it makes sense.
Sticking to our own path sounds nice, but time is a huge factor in today's fast-moving world.
If something isn't working, why waste time?
Instead of struggling to figure everything out on our own, we can look at what's already worked for others.
Adapting or learning from their success can save us a ton of time and help us avoid unnecessary mistakes.
Sometimes it's just smarter to follow a proven path than to keep pushing a failing idea.
Because there are many entrepreneurs.
They look at what's working for others and adapt it to their own situation.
Let's talk about Didi, the Chinese ride-hailing app.
They didn't start from scratch with a completely new original idea.
They looked at Uber, learned from Uber's model, which was already successful, but localized it to fit China's market so that they didn't waste time experimenting with something totally new.
They borrowed a proven business model and then made it their own.
And that's how they grew so fast.
If they had to start with their original ideas, they might not have taken off the way they did.
Yeah, it is a good example of the Didi, the Chinese car hailing app.
But what Tianlu didn't tell us is that if you go to the navigation apps like Baidu map and or Gaode maps, you actually can find at least eight or ten other car hailing apps that are less successful, less famous than Didi.
And there may be hundreds more brands or ambitious entrepreneurs that try to model after the successful example of Uber and then eventually didn't end up succeeding.
So yeah, there is something to learn from Didi's story, but Maybe they're just less creative.
It's true.
Yeah, every path leads to success, that's for sure.
But I think this process of imitating just simply trying to model yourself after someone else's success may not be always the best strategy.
And trying to learn from.
Maybe an exception like in this case, Didi may not be the best example, the most convincing answer to for for everybody because, like i said, behind that there may be more apps and uh, other companies that try to follow this path of uber and then eventually failed or at least not become as successful.
The more forgettable names than Didi, because apparently that's the only name we can think of or remember.
Or maybe there's another one, Cao Cao, a Cao Cao car hailing.
But my point is there's a lot more that have become forgettable rather than becoming successful.
I'm not going to argue whether it's going to be a successful path or not by imitating others.
Because, like I said, every approach, every path has a possibility of achieving your outcome, becoming successful.
But I think a more scary part of this blindly imitation simply because of seeing other people's success, their glamour, The more scary part is that you will eventually forget your own passion.
You lose your own enthusiasm.
You don't know where you came from.
And this happens so often in the modern times.
It doesn't have to be necessarily something that you saw with your own eyes from other people's lives.
It could be a fabricated concept in your own head or someone else put it in your head.
For example, when you grew up, then your parents tell you that this job, this career, will be more financially rewarding than this path.
And then you took on this path because of your parents' advice.
And then when you go to work, a lot of people just follow this corporate ladder by climbing up, getting promoted as a hands-on person that does technical work For example in our line of work, the person that sits in front of the mic and record our voices then some people they would just follow that corporate ladder by trying to get promoted and then get into management.
And that does look like a path that should be a universal answer to the whole world.
But that's not always the case.
Doing managerial work may not be a good fit for you, just like the examples given by your parents of a more promising career, of a more glamorous looking job, may not be something that you will have an interest in.
So my point is this modern world, where there looks like to be tons of choices, it's a lot more easier.
I mean in the case of ourselves.
It's a lot more easier for us to get lost among these options and other people's success than this person from the story of Zhuangzi, the person named Handan, because compared to this person in the story, it's a lot more easier for us to get flooded by too many options and during this process of being distracted by this person's success, that person's success, then we eventually forget.
We keep modeling our career path after someone else's and then eventually you will forget your own passion in the first place and even if you achieve that, it may not lead to a successful life, because that may turn out to be successful, but not something you picture yourself doing from the first place.
From the starting point, You're saying that your parents or other people think this way or that way is better for you.
But actually, no, you prefer your own way.
Right.
So sometimes you may not be distracted by your own eyes of seeing someone else's elegant walk, like Handan did.
But this may be a concept that someone else is putting in you.
And so all these...
Information, advice will distract us from doing something that we really wanted.
But when you really want something and you haven't tried it before, so you're a newbie then if you don't look at how other people behave, how other people do that, how other people complete the task, how will you know the proper way to do the job or complete the task?
I mean, at least we need to give it a try.
If we don't even make an effort to learn from others or try different approaches, how can we be so sure what works for us?
Sometimes it's only by exploring and practicing various ideas.
Maybe the ideas are from others or from those successful entrepreneurs or whatever.
Then we can discover what fits our situation.
Just like Jeff Bezos, he started Amazon as an online bookstore, but that wasn't a new idea.
Other companies were already doing similar things.
However, Bezos didn't stop there.
He studied the broader market and saw opportunities to expand into other categories and build Amazon into the all-encompassing marketplace we know today.
And Amazon Web Services as well.
It was another big leap, inspired by what other tech companies were doing with infrastructure.
He saw potential and then took it further.
So let's say, if Bezos hadn't been paying attention to what others were doing, he might have missed out on these key opportunities to grow Amazon into a tech and retail powerhouse.
So without learning from others and experimenting, and without looking at how other people do their job, we can't really know what will or will not work for us.
So I think this is more about being selective when we try to learn something from others.
Yes, of course, don't just copy.
We can borrow the idea and then adapt, improve and make those ideas our own.
And learning from others is often the first step to finding our own path, the first step to begin.
And without that knowledge, we might end up stuck.
Yeah, definitely.
Success always comes from learning in the first place.
That's why we go to school and we learn from teachers.
But I think the real difference here between our stances, between mine and Tianlu's, is that after you find your passion, people still get easily distracted because of all the options and information we have in the modern world, especially with the Internet.
And I think now it's a lot more common for people to get distracted and to get misled from their initial path and direction by someone else's success.
Because, like I said, you should always keep trying borrowing from others ideas, learn from their uniqueness, and the grass is always greener on the other side, but i'm afraid in this modern world it's not only has one side, but there's just so many more sites with greener looking grass that will distract you from your own lawn, which you should be taking care of, and spending time investing your effort in taking care of this lawn, And by distracting by these greener sides, will easily take you between different people's glamour and success.
And eventually it's hard for you to achieve anything because you're too busy with modeling yourself after someone else's path.
Yeah, but I'm talking about like being selective when we try to imitate others.
Like you said, sticking to our own path is, of course, very important, but there's nothing wrong with imitating or learning from others along the way.
Because imitation is an essential part of learning.
Imitation isn't about losing ourselves.
It's about speeding up our learning process.
And the key is to take what works for others and then make it our own.
So we are not wasting time figuring out everything from scratch.
Because I don't think it can save time if you start from zero, if you start from knowing nothing.
So, whether in our daily life or business, or work or whatever, learning from those who came before us is often the fastest way to success, I think.
Okay, sounds cool.
So I guess I can stick with my point while Tianlu tries to learn from the good points.
From my stance.
From both of us.
And that's how we're going to conclude this discussion.
And we'll see you next time.
That was Yunqi and Tianlu discussing their takeaways from the story.
The Young Man Who Imitated the Handan Walk 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.
Thanks for tuning in.
You can find us on Apple Podcasts by searching Roundtable China.
I'm Steve, and we'll see you next time.
