The horse did not go faster. Indeed, the horse soon stopped and did not run at all. The man drove the horse into the river and angrily pressed his head into the water and then mounted the horse again. The horse however, still refused to move and the man repeated the torture three times.

This man certainly did understand how to torture his horse and to make him feel afraid, but he understood nothing of the art of riding.

One of the most popular Chinese fables has a moral found also in common analogues of the fable in Western collections, but none better expresses its point. It is by T’ing Shi from the fifteenth century, and it is very well known today.

A man caught a turtle and wanted to make soup out of it, but he had a guilty conscience about killing. So he boiled a pot of water and laid a strip of bamboo across it, and said to the turtle: “We are told that you can crawl fast, but I would like to see this demonstrated. I am a compassionate man. If you can crawl across this piece of bamboo to the other side I will set you free.”

The turtle was well aware of the intentions of the man, but he did his very best and actually succeeded in making his way across the bamboo piece.

The man, of course, did not expect this, but quickly recovered and said: “That’s fine, really fine. Now if you can only just come back across.”

Some versions reported for T’ing Shi’s piece have a longer ending, with the turtle answering. The man says: