Storyteller: You must have heard the 700B dollar TARP money from the government.  Hope it can help the falling banks and make our economic system run right again. But some people are skeptical.  They think that comparing to trillions of bad assets and leveraged losses the banks have, 700B is nothing, is too insufficient to achieve anything.  There is a Chinese idiom to describe this kind of situation.
Cup Water in Firefighting
One day, a man named “Big Zhao” passed a tea shop, carrying a cart full load of firewood.  He stopped, …

Storyteller: In such a severe global financial crisis, preserve your hard earned money is critical for everyone.  Lots of people think paper notes as numbers on your bank statement is too vulnerable to inflation, and gold or silver might be a better alternative.  But where is the safest place to store your shiny precious heavy metal? In your bank? In a bullet-proof steel-made password-protected storage case? Somewhere underground in your backyard? An ancient Chinese had also thought about this question, and found a quite surprising solution.
“No 300 taels of silver …

Storyteller: “There is no free lunch”, “Pie in the sky”.  We all know these phrases. They tell us to take efforts and work hard towards our goal; and don’t depend on luckiness or miracle.  There is a Chinese edition of story for the same idea, and IMHO, it’s more vivid and fun than the two phrases.
Waiting for more hares to dash dead against the stump

This story happened more than 2,000 years ago, in the Warring States period of China (475-221B.C.).  There was a young farmer in the state of Song.  …

Storyteller: As a Ph. D. student myself, I certainly respect well-educated people. “Knowledge is power”. No matter you are a college computer science professor or a farmer who owns 100 acres of crop field, knowledge is critically important to your work and everyday life.  However, having a high degree does not equally mean one is good at everything, and sometimes, knowing too much can make a simple thing unnecessarily complicated, especially when one wants to show off his knowledge in a wrong scenario.  Here is a good story told by …