Whenever Bo Ya played the lute, Zhong Ziqi would listen to him. Once when he was playing the lute, his thoughts turned to Mount Tai. Zhong Ziqi said, “How splendidly you play the lute! Lofty and majestic like Mount Tai.” A short time later, when his thoughts turned to rolling waters, Zhong Ziqi said, “How splendidly you play the lute! Rolling and swelling like a rushing river.” When Zhong Ziqi died, Bo Ya smashed the lute and cut its strings. To the end of his life, he never played the lute again because he felt that there was no one in the world worth playing for.

The Annals of Lü Buwei [3rd century BC], translated by John Knoblock and Jeffrey Riegel. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000, p. 308.


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