Value and the “way”

Value and the “Way”

“I think it’s useful,” Knotty Xiao said, “I’m not clever at words, I can’t tell you why it’s useful. But it’s grown this big, and that took some doing. If it was a kiddie, the people who’d brought it up couldn’t just cut it down.”

“No one has planted it,” said Li Li, shaking his head impatiently. “There are too many of these trees growing wild. If it weren’t for them we could have achieved the great cause of Reclamation long ago. A blank sheet of paper, that’s what you need for the most up-to-date, the most splendid pictures. Trees growing wild get in the way, they need to be cut down – that’s Revolution, it’s got nothing to do with raising children!”

(Ah Cheng, The King of Trees, 141-142)

This passage from Ah Cheng’s “The King of Trees” explains how Li Li believes that the king of tree needs to be cut down because it has no value, where Knotty Xiao tries to protect it because he contemplates that the tree does have value. Through the use of Daoism, Ah Cheng asks the questions of whether the tree itself has value, should we change the traditional value and is Knotty Xiao “the way”.

Does the king of tree have value? Li Li and Knotty Xiao have different opinions about it. The king of tree has been at the same place for thousands of years, it represents the idea of the Daoism. It witnessed and faced many hardships throughout its life time. Through the world changing, it still survived for thousands of years, it’s never changing path and the way how it lives, and it represents the Daoism. However does the tree have value even though it followed the “way”? Li Li believes that it doesn’t have value, because “trees growing wild get in the way.” It is not useful to make papers, therefore it is not useful. From this quote, you can tell that Li Li does not believe in Daoism. Daoism is nature itself. The king of tree grew in the wild, so it was made through the nature. Li Li does not follow “Dao.” Knotty Xiao in the other hand believes that it has value because “people who’d brought it up couldn’t just cut it down.” If people want to cut the tree down, they would have done it a long time ago. Even though it is in the way, people have not cut it down; there must be a reason for it. It must have some kind of value. The King of tree does not get credits for stood on the ground and provide Carbon dioxide to this world. It went through many years of storm and heavy rain, and it still kept growing. Knotty Xiao saw that, and