Abbreviation of the story of Yu Gong Moves the Mountains

There was a ninety-year-old man named Yu Gong in Beishan. He suffered from the inconvenient transportation in the mountains and had to take long detours to get in and out, so he called his whole family to eradicate the mountains with all their strength. Everyone agreed.

But a wise old man on the river bend laughed at Yu Gong and said: "You are so unintelligent! With your frail age and poor strength, you want to eradicate the two mountains of Taihang and Wangwu." Isn’t it just an idiot’s dream?” Yu Gong replied, “You are short-sighted.

You think that if I die, I will still have a son; a son will have a grandson, and a grandson will have a son; a son will have a son, and a son will have another son. There will be no end to the number of descendants, but these two mountains will not increase or change, so why not worry about getting rid of them?" The wise old man had no words to answer. ?

Extended information

The creative background of "The Foolish Old Man Moves the Mountains":

The Warring States Period was a period of great social change, and it was also a period of contention among a hundred schools of thought in academic thought. As an important part of the prose of various scholars, fables became a powerful weapon for them to clarify their political views, academic thoughts and debates during the Warring States Period.

"Liezi" is a collection of fables and myths produced under such a historical background. This article is selected from Chapter 5 of "Liezi·Tangwen". It tells the story of the foolish old man who was not afraid of the difficulties and kept digging the mountain, and finally moved the Emperor of Heaven to move the mountain away. It also shows that under the conditions of extremely underdeveloped productivity at that time, People can only imagine that they can realize their desire to conquer nature with the help of gods with superhuman power.

This fable also has very important objective significance. First of all, it has the idea that man can conquer nature. In the relationship between heaven and man, the tendency of valuing man and despising nature is very clear. Secondly, when Yu Gong criticized Zhisou, his analysis of the relationship between mountains and people actually contains progressive philosophical thoughts, which talks about the principle that the relationship between things can be transformed under certain conditions.

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