Blocking Ears to Steal a Bell
By Liu Ping
Once upon a time in China, there
were two countries. One was named
“Zhao.” The other was named “Qin.”
These two countries were fighting for
many years. Zhao had a big bell which
was hung on the tallest house‟s roof. If
an enemy came, guards would ring a bell
to tell everybody to get ready to fight.
Qin‟s army was very worried about this
bell because several times when they
wanted to unexpectedly attack Zhao,
the bell rang, so the attack was defeated. One day, Qin‟s leader wanted
his people to talk about how to solve
this problem. After a silence, one man
stood up and said that they could steal
the bell. Others agreed. And the man
who had this suggestion became the volunteer to steal the bell. On a night
without moon, the man climbed up the
house. When he prepared to steal the
bell, he thought of an important thing
that he had never considered. That is:
the bell must ring when he touched it.
What could he do? He thought and
thought. So he decided to block his
ears in order to prevent hearing the
bell ring. He thought if he didn‟t hear
anything, other must not hear either.
At last, he did it like that. But the
guards did hear the bell. And then, he
was arrested by Zhao‟s guards. This
story tells us: Don‟t consider something
is the same as you think. Today in
China, “Blocking one‟s ears to steal a
bell” is used to describe an action or an
idea that means fooling oneself by believing no one knows what you are doing
or what you think.
Teacher: Sally McElroy
Level 6 Afternoon
Fall 2009
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