Today’s Classical Chinese translation: The Oil-Hawking Geezer.
Sir Chen Kangsu was a great shot — the best archer in the world, in fact. He was busy practicing in his own yard when some oil-hawking geezer set down his wares to take a good long stare. When he saw that eight or nine of every ten arrows struck the bullseye, the old geezer nodded slightly.
“Oh,” called Kangsu, “are you also a big archery stan? Hot stuff, don’t you think?”
“Meh,” said the hawker, “it’s just a matter of practice.”
Kangsu was insulted. “And just who are you to brush me off like that, huh, hotshot?”
“Here, lemme show you my oil.” The old man put a drinking gourd on the ground, and laid one of those coins with a threading hole in the middle over the mouth. He slowly poured a ladle of oil straight through the threading-hole without leaving the slightest trace of oil on the coin. “See? Just a matter of practice, that’s all.”
Kangsu really had to let that one slide.
Source text: https://zh-classical.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%B3%A3%E6%B2%B9%E7%BF%81
Localization note: the original story takes it for granted that of course “money” has a small hole in the middle; I was very confused trying to grasp what was going on until I figured out they meant this particular type of coin.
