Yu Gong had a very low stool. When he wanted to sit on it, he always placed bricks under each leg.
Later he found it very troublesome and hit upon an idea. He ordered a servant to take it upstairs. But when he sat on it again, he found it just as low.
“Well, people say it’s higher upstairs, but I don’t find it so!” he said.
Allegorical Meaning
Misplaced Solutions & Superficial Problem-Solving:
Yu Gong’s action — moving the stool upstairs instead of simply raising it directly (e.g., adding taller legs) — satirizes the human tendency to choose complex, indirect, or location-based “solutions” that fail to address the core problem (the stool’s inherent height). It highlights how effort can be wasted on superficial changes.
Blame-Shifting & Externalizing Responsibility:
By declaring the tower “falsely famous” for being high, Yu Gong blames the environment (the tower’s height) rather than acknowledging his own flawed solution or the stool’s design. This critiques the habit of deflecting responsibility onto external factors instead of self-reflection.
Failure to Understand Relativity:
Yu Gong misunderstands relative height. The stool’s height remains constant; moving it upstairs changes its absolute altitude but not its functional height relative to the user. This symbolizes how people often misconstrue fundamental relationships or principles.
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