Zhan He used a single strand of silk as a fishing line, and a sharp needle bent into a hook, and a fine bamboo from the Chu estate as a fishing rod, and dissected grains of rice to make bait, and hooked a big fish that could fill a cart from a hundred-foot abyss and in the middle of a rapids, and the fish could not be pulled without the hook straightening out, nor the rod being bent.

The king of Chu was astonished when he heard of this, and sent for him to ask why.

Zhan He said, "I have heard the first doctor tell me that Pu and Zi shot arrows with a weak bow and a fine seizure, and with the help of the wind fired the arrows, and hit the two yellow warblers on the edge of the green clouds with a single arrow. This was due to his concentration and evenness of effort, which did not deviate from the target. I learned to fish after him, and it took me five years to realize his technique. When I went to the river and picked up the rod to fish, my mind was free of distractions, and I only thought of fishing, casting the line out and letting the hook sink into the water, with a balanced force on my hand, without any lightness or heaviness, so that nothing in the outside world could interfere with me. When a fish sees my bait, it swallows it as if it were a bubble of sludge, without any doubt. That is why I am able to subdue a big fish with a weak tackle, and use a light thing to get a heavy thing. The first thing I did was to get the best out of them.

Explanation This fable is to say that it is a shortcut to success to be good at absorbing the experience of the previous generations and following the trend of nature.