Introduction

Reading about the history of China, one finds many stories of people’s lives. Some of them are amusing, others are tragic. There is for example a comic story about the minister and teacher Feng Dao 馮道 (882-954) living in the period of Five Dynasties (907-960). He was teaching the Daodejing to his students, including the famous first line: “The Dao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Dao” (dao ke dao fei chang dao 道可道非常道).1 Yet the students did not dare to read the character dao aloud, as it was the name of their teacher. Every time they had to read the sentence, they read it as: “‘Not dare to say’ that can be ‘Not dare to say’ is not the enduring and unchanging ‘Not dare to say’” (bugan shuo ke bugan shuo fei chang bugan shuo 不敢說可不敢說, 非常不敢說).2 The example is also interesting because of its information on learning practice.