Egglaying, Cackling, Etc

There were two hens in a coop. one was fond of cackling while the other liked to keepquiet. As it is customary for a hen to cackle after laying an egg, the chicken raiseraccordingly credited the cackler with all the eggs that had been laid. As a result, he becameso partial to his favourite bird that he fed her with every cockroach he caught. With thepassing of time, however, it became known that the cackler had in fact laid very few eggswhile the non-cackler kept laying one egg a day. Every time, as soon as the latter laid anegg, she quit the coop quietly, leaving the former standing by the newly-laid egg shoutingand yelling her head off.Once, when I chatted with a friend about this, he thought what I had in mind was notthe hen, but men in general. As a matter of fact, our forefathers long ago already drew ananalogy between the hen and a human, as witness the Chinese idiom “No hen crows atdawn” (meaning “No woman is to usurp man’s power”) in The Book of History: Mu Shi. Itis true that there are among us many who stick to their posts and quietly immersethemselves in hard work day and night, creating enormous material wealth for the state andachieving one success after another for the people. Like the above-mentioned good layer,they eat simple food, but lay eggs, often without making a fanfare. There are among us,however, another kind of people who, armed with a glib tongue, indulge in incessantself-glorification and, like the above-mentioned cackler, hold on to the coop without layingany egg. Some few even go so far as to brazenly claim credit for work that was done byothers.The proper way to evaluate a person is of course by watching whether or not he “layseggs” not by listening to him singing his own praises. When a braggart lays one egg, hewill talk in such a way as if he had laid ten eggs. When he puts in a tiny bit of work, hewill talk as if he had done ten times as much. He will naturally find favour with amuddleheaded boss who trusts his ears more than his eyes. The braggart will thus findhimself quickly climbing up the social ladder. As to those engrossed in “laying eggs”,because they are reserved and content to live in obscurity they gain little public attention,let alone recognition. They are given no “cockroaches” to eat. They do not even have a“shelter for egglaying”.It is in one’s nature to be either noisy or quiet. As something ingrained, it cannot becompletely changed overnight. But life is short while the probe into the mysteries of theuniverse is long and unlimited. If we indulge in empty talk and trickery day and night, howcan we have time and energy for serious study and tackling key problems confronting thecountry on its new Long March towards modernization? The most important thing is tostand fast to the “coop” and “lay” more “eggs” for this nation of 900,000,000 people.