Again the hunters lighted the torch and again the sentry sounded the alarm and the flock awoke, found nothing, and went back to sleep. On the third try, the flock decided that the sentry bird was playing tricks on them. They bit him mercilessly and then went back to sleep.

A few minutes later, the hunters lighted the torch but this time the sentry remained silent. And the hunters drew in the net and caught the birds.

Mo Ti of the fifth century, founder of the Mohist school, is credited with:

Tsu Ch’in asked his teacher Mo Tsu if there can be any true virtue in being talkative.

Mo Tsu answered: “What value can there be in being talkative? Take the frog in the pond. He croaks all day and all night, and no one pays any attention to him. On the other hand, the cock crows only once or twice at dawn and everyone listens to him. Talk, therefore, only when it does some good.”

Some of the fables recorded in China from ancient times are literary forms, written in literary Chinese without any clear signs of having been in oral tradition at all, unlike the Greek and Middle East fables, which do in fact often show the distinct features of having had a very long oral tradition. Even though the ancient Chinese fable is clothed in literary form and is generally attributed to a great thinker or philosopher, there is every reason to believe that many were in oral tradition and were current among the people at large, both as rhetorical devices and as fable/folktale complexes. It is clear, of course, that they became part of (or returned to) oral tradition soon after having been written, and a large number of these are known and used today. Many of these are humorous, and this resulted in a number of them being recast as jokes circulated orally or being reintroduced in written form as parts of collections of humorous tales, a number of which have survived through the history of Chinese popular literature. One fable that became a popular joke was:

There was once a man who had a friend who had attained immortality. When the immortal found out that his friend was in dire straits, he pointed to a brick, turned it to gold, and offered it to his friend. The friend was not satisfied with that. The immortal pointed his finger at a large statue and turned it into gold for him, but the friend was still not satisfied.

“How, then, can I satisfy you?” the immortal asked. “You don’t seem to want the gold. What do you want?”