There is a student who asked his teacher outright how far along he was.
What came back was a single word, vessel, and he had to ask a second time what kind of vessel he was.
The same man, in another place, was told that poetry could now be talked about with him. This chapter sets the two judgements one man received side by side.
What Am I Like
This is the third passage of the Gongye Chang book. Unlike the chapters before it, the one asking here is the student.
Zigong stands in front of his teacher and asks how he is regarded. He is not after a judgement on somebody else but on himself, and that shape does not come up often in this book.
賜也何如 女器也 何器也 瑚璉也
si ye he ru, ru qi ye, he qi ye, hu lian ye
What is Ci like. You are a vessel. What kind of vessel. A hu lian. (Analects 5.3)
Four turns are packed into thirteen characters. Through the asking and the answering and the asking again, the teacher never once lengthened a sentence.
The Answer Was Vessel
You are a vessel. In the original that is ru qi ye (女器也), three characters.
Ru (女) here does not mean woman but you, standing for the character ru (汝). It is how a man addresses a student placed in front of him.
The answer is short enough that Zigong could not have known on the spot whether it was good news. Vessel on its own does not settle whether the thing is large or small, precious or common.
So he asks again. What kind of vessel.
The Name Hu Lian
Hu lian (瑚璉) is a name of two characters.
It is the vessel that holds grain at the ancestral sacrifice, ornamented with jade and never brought out for ordinary use. Line up the vessels and rank them, and this one goes at the top.
So the answer is plainly high praise.
There is another property to a ritual vessel, though. Anywhere outside the ancestral hall it has nothing to do. Rice cannot be served in it and water cannot be drawn with it, and on days when there is no sacrifice it simply sits in storage.
A Junzi Is Not a Vessel
The Weizheng book carries four characters, junzi bu qi (君子不器). (Analects 2.12) A junzi is not a vessel.
Set those four characters alongside the Gongye Chang passage and the answer sounds different, because the man who said that one must not be a vessel called one of his students exactly that.
Zhu Xi took hu lian as a vessel of high rank while holding that Zigong had not yet reached the place where a man is no vessel at all.
Read as praise, it is a teacher handing his student the highest grade there is. Read as a limit, it is a teacher telling him how far he has come and where that leaves him. Which of the two it is has not been written down inside this short exchange.
Poor Without Flattering
The same man hears something else in another place. This is the fifteenth passage of the Xue Er book.
Here too it is Zigong who asks first. What would it be, he says, to be poor without flattering and rich without being proud.
Pin er wu chan, fu er wu jiao (貧而無諂 富而無驕), eight characters. He sets out what he has been holding to and asks whether this much will do, so the shape of the question is close to the earlier scene.
Confucius said it was well enough. Then he went on.
Not Equal To
未若貧而樂 富而好禮者也
wei ruo pin er le, fu er hao li zhe ye
Not equal to being poor and glad, rich and fond of li. (Analects 1.15)
Eleven characters, and the standard moves.
What Zigong offered was a list of things not done. No flattering, no pride. It is the language of holding out without giving way.
What his teacher put above it belongs to doing. To be glad while poor and fond of li while rich, the strength spent on enduring the condition has to be left over and running somewhere else.
Holding on to an absence and making a presence cost a man in different places.
Now We Can Talk About Poetry
Zigong did not step back once he heard that. He brought in a line from the Book of Songs.
Ru qie ru cuo, ru zhuo ru mo (如切如磋 如琢如磨), eight characters. As if cut, as if filed, as if chiselled, as if polished, a phrase that described the working of jade and bone.
Good material worked over once more is what it says, so the move from not flattering to being glad becomes exactly that second working.
The teacher’s response closes the scene. Ci, he says, now poetry can be talked about with you.
And he adds one line. Gao zhu wang er zhi lai zhe (告諸往而知來者), seven characters. Here is a man who is told what has gone and knows what is coming.
Today, What Vessel Are You Called
A man praised for years as good at his work finds one day that the praise has narrowed. It has hardened into good at that work, and when he tries to move elsewhere somebody starts calling it a waste.
The answer hu lian carries that same doubleness. Precious and assigned to one place sit together inside a single name.
What Zigong did after hearing it is not recorded. What we do have is the Xue Er scene, where he took his teacher’s answer and gave back a line of poetry, and where the word he heard was not vessel but that poetry could be talked about with him.
What vessel am I called these days, and is that name a fortune or a pity for me.