The Foolish Old Man Removes the Mountains

The Foolish Old Man Removes the Mountains (Chinese: 愚公移山; pinyin: Yúgōng Yíshān) is a well-known fable from Chinese mythology about the virtues of perseverance and willpower. The tale first appeared in Book 5 of the Liezi, a Daoist text of the 4th century BC, and was retold in the Garden of Stories by the Confucian scholar Liu Xiang in the 1st century BC. It was also used by Mao Zedong in a famous speech in 1945.