◎ Liezi
Gan Ying was a great master of archery in ancient times. He could shoot animals and flying birds without missing the target. He had a student named Fei Wei, who performed even better than his teacher. Ji Chang wanted to learn archery from Fei Wei. The archery master told him, “You must learn not to wink before we discuss archery.”
After returning home, Ji Chang laid under his wife’s weaving machine, staring at the footplates up and down and trying not to wink. After practicing this for two years, he would not wink even when his eye sockets felt like they were being stabbed with needles. He told his teacher what he had achieved, but his teacher said, “That is not enough, however. You must also develop good eyesight. The essence is that you must be able to see small things as big ones and dim thing very clearly, and then come to me again.”
Following his teacher’s advice, returning home, Ji Chang bundled a louse on the window with a hair drawn from a cattle tail. Facing southwards every day, Ji Chang stared at the louse. After ten days passed, the louse became to appear a little larger to his eyes. After three years, the tiny louse became as large as a wheel. When looking at other things larger than the louse, he saw them as huge as hills. Then, Ji Chang used a bow decorated with the cattle horn from the State Yan and an arrow made of the grass straw from the north to shoot at the louse. He did a wonderful job: the arrow impaled the center of the louse; while the cattle tail hair, used to suspend the louse didn’t even break swaying on the window.
Ji Chang felt overjoyed about his progress, and told his teacher what had happened. Fei Wei jumped for joy, and said while patting Ji Chang on the shoulder, “You have mastered the skill of shooting.”
