Playing the Guqin to a Cow
"Playing Music to a Cow" comes from the Han-dynasty "Hongming Ji," an ancient Chinese fable. A musician played his finest piece to a cow — beautifully, but utterly wasted, because the cow couldn't appreciate it at all. The idiom means talking to the wrong audience is a waste of breath; you must choose who you speak to. Though some now joke: maybe it's not that they don't get it, it's that I don't play well enough!
Long, long ago in China, there lived a master of the guqin, a seven-stringed zither. His name was Gongming Yi, and his music was so beautiful that even the birds would stop to listen.
One morning, Gongming Yi carried his guqin to the edge of a field. There he saw a yellow ox, grazing with its head bent low.
What a lovely morning, he thought. Let me play a tune for this ox. He sat down, plucked the strings gently, and began an elegant melody.
The music flowed like a stream, then drifted like a breeze — it was wonderful. But the ox kept its head down, munching grass, and did not even lift its head.
Gongming Yi played with even greater care, his fingers dancing swiftly over the strings. Still the ox ignored him; it did not even swish its tail.
He stopped and wondered: why did the ox show no reaction at all? He looked at the ox, and suddenly he understood.
The ox simply could not understand such refined music. So Gongming Yi changed his approach and imitated the buzzing of mosquitoes: bzzz, bzzz.
Then he imitated the lowing of a young calf: Moo — moo! And something strange happened!
At once the ox pricked up its ears, raised its head, and wagged its tail, as if answering him. Gongming Yi laughed: Now you understand me at last!
The idiom playing the guqin to a cow comes from the Lihuolun, written in China's Eastern Han dynasty, and tells this very story of Gongming Yi. The guqin has seven strings and is one of China's oldest instruments. Today people use this idiom to describe preaching great truths to someone who cannot understand them.
