If you could have dinner with any fictional character, who would it be?
When I was young, a story took root in me — “The Foolish Old Man Removes the Mountains” (Yu Gong Yi Shan), a classic Chinese fable. If I could sit across a dinner table from any fictional character, I’d choose Yu Gong. Not because he’s heroic in the usual sense — but because he quietly planted in the hearts of millions of children in our country the enduring values of faith, willpower, and perseverance.
You probably know the tale. Yu Gong, already ninety years old, lived with two colossal mountains blocking his family’s path. Every day, his family had to circle around them just to go about their lives. So he made a decision that seemed absurd: he would dig them away, shovel by shovel, carrying the soil and rocks all the way to the sea.
A skeptical neighbour laughed at him. “You’re ninety,” he said. “You can’t even move a pebble, let alone two mountains.”
Yu Gong’s reply has stayed with me my whole life: “When I die, my sons will continue. When they die, my grandsons. And their sons after them. The work will never end — but the mountains will never grow taller.”
That line, I think, is where the story stops being about stubbornness and starts being about love. What moves me isn’t just his persistence — it’s that he wasn’t working for himself at all. He was working for generations he would never meet. He traded the comfort of his final years for the ease of descendants he’d only ever imagine. The skeptic called him foolish — but I wonder now who was really blind.
Over dinner, I think I’d tell Yu Gong that his story reminds me of something Jesus once said: “If you can! Everything is possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:23). Where there’s a will, there’s a way — and if a ninety-year-old man could move mountains, then what excuse do the rest of us have?
But more than that, I’d thank him. Because growing up with this story has shaped not just my determination, but my faith. I’ve come to hold close another verse: “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). So when I face something too heavy to carry alone, I trust that I don’t have to.
If I were really sitting across from Yu Gong that evening, I think I’d raise my cup and say: Thank you for teaching me that love outlasts logic, and that faith sees what eyes cannot. Not as a grand lesson — but as the quiet truth I’d want to remember.
And maybe, before the meal ends, I’d share this little poem with him — not to impress, but as a small offering of gratitude.
—
✨Seeing Through✨
A small towel can soak a vat of water dry,
A drone can scan an entire nation from the sky.
Cicadas chirp — yet nowhere seen their trace,
Worker ants carve tunnels — hidden from your face.
The sparrow may be small, yet who can deny
The balance of the world without its tiny fly?
Do not mistake the small for nothingness —
No little thing is trivial, I confess.
All ventures start with hardship — the first gate
Is none but your own self, your own estate.
To see and then believe — that is not trust;
To trust what eyes can’t see — that faith is just.
The visible can never match the unseen’s might;
The foundation laid, both life and death are set in light.
So close your eyes, and open wide your heart —
What eyes let go, the soul may grasp — and start.
en yan hua fang 