“Do you know why you could not break the bundle of arrows?” The king asked. “One arrow is easily snapped, but if you keep the arrows together in one unified bundle, they are unbreakable. If all of you can unite and work for the common good, you will be able to ensure the safety of this kingdom.”

The content of the following fable is easily recognizable. It is from Hsun Kuang of the fourth century B.C. It illustrates that no one can change the way different people perceive another person.

Two men were discussing their master.

The first mentioned how ugly he felt their master was.

The other said: “How ugly? You mean how handsome he is!”

“How ugly!” the first answered.

“How handsome,” retorted the other.

They argued for a long long time and could never agree. Finally the first demanded they ask for an outside opinion: “Just get someone else and you’ll see I’m right.”

A tenth-century poet is credited with a very special fable that has harmonics in the Greek tradition. In “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” there is active deception; in the Sung Chi fable, however, the false alarms are meant to be real:

The smallest goose in a flock is chosen to be sentry bird during the night. At the slightest sound it sounds the alarm, and the flock immediately wake and fly off.

Some goose hunters, knowing about this characteristic of the goose flocks, set out to foil the sentry. First they found the area in which the flock slept and spread out an enormous net covering the area. Then they hid themselves.

After the flock had returned and had gone to sleep, the hunters lighted a torch. But the moment the sentry gave the warning, they extinguished the torch. The geese, startled by the alarm, frantically searched for the danger but found everything in order and went back to sleep.