Whirl his axe so as to produce a wind

On the top of the nose of that man of Ying there is a little bit of mud like a fly's wing, He sent for the artisan Shih to cut it away. Shih whirled his axe so as to produce a wind, which immediately carried off the mud entirely, leaving the nose uninjured, and the (statue of) the man of Ying' standing undisturbed.

The ruler Yüan of Sung heard of the feat, called the artisan Shih, and said to him, 'Try and do the same thing on me.' The artisan said, 'Your servant has been able to trim things in that way, but the material on which I have worked has been dead for a long time.'

(运斤成风, Yun Jin Cheng Feng)

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