Philosophy — A Story & Hour Cultural Series, No. 34
The Man Who Never Tastes
The kitchen is four steps wide. A shophouse in Foshan, a street that smells of star anise and rain. The old cook — everyone calls him Master Liang — stands at a blackened wok burner older than his apprentice’s marriage, and it is six in the evening, the hour when orders arrive like weather.
In Chinese, what he keeps finding has a name: zhongyong (中庸), the doctrine of the mean — where zhong (中) means to hit the center without deviating, and yong (庸) means to use that accuracy, hold it, repeat it, until it becomes ordinary. Not an average. Not a compromise. A practiced aim.
The apprentice ladles broth from the big pot, blows on it, tastes. He salts, tastes again, salts again. Behind him, Master Liang cooks without tasting at all. A pinch of salt from the clay jar, thrown before the greens even meet the oil — a movement more like a drummer’s than a chemist’s. When the fish goes in he counts nothing aloud, but twice tilts the wok off the flame a breath early, and the oil’s voice drops to exactly the level he wants. He knew the sound of oil at the edge of burning the way a driver knows the edge of the road — not by thinking about it. By the hands.
“Teacher,” the apprentice finally asks, “why don’t you taste?”
“You taste to find the salt,” the old man says. “I already know how much goes in.” He flips the wok once. “That is what thirty years bought.”
What Is “Just Right” Made Of?
Not rules — rules cannot taste. Not talent — talent explains the first year, not the thirtieth. The old man’s pinch is something stranger: an accuracy that survives fatigue, humidity, a bad night’s sleep. What is that made of? And why did two schools on opposite ends of Eurasia, with no road yet between them, both conclude that this — not courage, not genius — is the rarest virtue?
One more question hides underneath: everyone files zhongyong under boring — the gray art of offending no one, splitting every difference. If that were true, the sages would be advising soup. The real doctrine despises the mush more than it despises error.
Chapter I — Not Faint Praise: What Zhong and Yong Actually Say
The word first appears as a single chapter in the Liji (礼记, the Book of Rites), attributed to Zisi (子思), Confucius’s grandson. A millennium later, in the 1190s, the Neo-Confucian master Zhu Xi (朱熹) lifted the chapter out and made it one of the Four Books (四书) — beside the Great Learning, the Analects and the Mencius — the canon every candidate for office memorized until the exams died in 1905. For six hundred years, the empire’s educated class carried this short text in their bones.
Cheng Yi (程颐), the Song-dynasty philosopher whose definition Zhu Xi adopted, unpacked the title in eleven characters: 不偏之谓中，不易之谓庸 — “Not deviating: that is zhong. Not changing: that is yong.” Not halfway. Not soft. On target, and staying on target.
The chapter’s own opening moves the aim inward. 喜怒哀乐之未发，谓之中；发而皆中节，谓之和 — “Before joy, anger, sorrow, or delight have stirred, that is zhong; once they stir, and each lands in due measure — that is he,” harmony. Read it twice: this is the opposite of numbness. The doctrine is not about feeling less. It is about the dosage of feeling: anger at the right person, delight at the right hour, grief in due measure — emotion with a marksman’s economy.
The text keeps insisting on difficulty. 中庸其至矣乎！民鲜能久矣 — “Zhongyong is the utmost! Few can hold it long.” And then the line that should be famous everywhere: 天下国家可均也，爵禄可辞也，白刃可蹈也，中庸不可能也 — “The empire can be governed, rank and salary declined, a whetted blade walked upon barefoot — but zhongyong cannot be done.” Governing a state, in this accounting, is the easy assignment. The moving target inside your own chest is the hard one.
As for the mush — Confucius had a special contempt ready. The xiangyuan (乡愿), the “village worthy” who agrees with everyone, offends no one, flows with whatever the decade believes: 乡愿，德之贼也 — “the village worthy is a thief of virtue.” Mencius sharpened it: he “runs with the common current, merges with the corrupt age, and everyone is pleased with him.” That is the tell. Everyone is pleased. The Zhongyong chapter on strength, answering Zilu’s question about what power really is, gives the true pose: 和而不流，中立而不倚 — harmonize, but do not drift; stand at the center, and do not lean — whether the whole state is pouring praise on you or pouring blame. Where the Daoist steps off the road entirely and follows the Way, the Confucian stands planted in the middle of it, upright in moving traffic.
Chapter II — Two Students, One Question: Confucius Teaching to the Mark
The classroom scenes in the Analects (论语) are anything but bland. Zigong once ran a poll for his teacher: of the two classmates, Shi and Shang, who is the better man? Confucius answered flat: 师也过，商也不及 — “Shi overshoots. Shang falls short.” Well then, said Zigong, Shi wins? 过犹不及 — “Overshooting is the same as falling short.” An arrow grazing the far side of the target scores nothing more than one grazing the near side. Both missed. Excitement is not extra credit.
Then the same question arrives twice, and the teacher contradicts himself on purpose. Zilu (子路) — big, loud, brave past the point of sense — asks: “When I hear something, should I act on it at once?” Confucius: “Your father and elder brothers are alive — how could you act at once?” Later, the quieter Ranyou asks exactly the same thing, and hears the opposite: “Act on it at once.” A third student, bewildered, asks why. The teacher explains: 求也退，故进之；由也兼人，故退之 — “Qiu hangs back, so I pushed him forward. You have the strength of two men, so I held you back.” One mark, two archers, two corrections. The advice was never a general law. It was aimed — fitted to the person standing in front of him. The Zhongyong names this shizhong (时中), the timely mean: a center that moves with the hour and the person, which is why no rulebook can hold it.
No image carried this further than archery, one of the six arts (六艺) a gentleman was trained in. 射不主皮 — “In archery, piercing the hide is not the point,” the Analects records of the old way; and Mencius 仁者如射 — “the good are like archers”: they straighten themselves before releasing, and if the shot misses, they do not curse the winner. They turn and look for the fault in their own stance (反求诸己). The middle, in this tradition, is an event, not a location.
It is the same teacher, remember, who stood by a river and refused to say the moment could be kept — the water that never returns. Time runs; so does the target. The mean is a spot you re-find, every single shot, until evening.
Chapter III — Athens Agrees: Aristotle’s Mean That Moves
Now set the coordinates again: the school of Lu, in Confucius’s lineage, versus Athens — the trade routes later called the Silk Road would not open for another two centuries. Within a hundred years of Zisi’s death, Aristotle (亚里士多德, 384–322 BCE), walking the Lyceum, set down in the Nicomachean Ethics (《尼各马可伦理学》) his own definition of excellence: virtue is a mean (mesotes) between two vices — one of excess, one of deficiency. Courage sits between rashness and cowardice. Generosity between waste and stinginess. The coward and the showoff have something deep in common: both are bad at dosage.
And like Confucius, Aristotle refuses the arithmetic average. The mean is “relative to us” (pros hemas): the wrestler Milo’s right amount of meat is not a beginner’s right amount. Substitute the salt jar in Foshan — the master’s pinch for this batch of greens, in this humidity, with this morning’s soy — and the sentence survives translation perfectly.
The two even agree on how the skill is built — the deepest convergence of all. Aristotle: we become builders by building, lyre-players by playing the lyre, just by doing just acts — not by memorizing rules about justice, but by rehearsing the act until it settles into a disposition (hexis). Master Liang’s thirty years, stated in Greek. On difficulty, they land on the same startling sentence. Confucius: blades can be walked, the mean cannot be done. Aristotle, on anger: anyone can get angry — that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, in the right way — “this is not within everybody’s power, and is not easy.” Two traditions, zero contact, one verdict: ethics is calibration, the center moves, and almost nobody can hold the aim for long.
Where they part is telling. Aristotle cataloged — pairs of vices, each virtue filed between them. The Zhongyong kept the moving center — shizhong — because the mark drifts with the season of a life. The Greek made the mean a measuring instrument; the Chinese made it a practice you re-earn every evening, in a kitchen, by firelight. That is why one ends up in textbooks, and the other also ends up in kitchens.
The Salt Test: Finding Your Own Mark
Here is the experiment, no temple required. Season something in half-pinches, and stop at “almost enough” — notice how the dish finishes itself, and how your hand wanted one more anyway. That surplus impulse, felt and not obeyed, is 过犹不及 made visible. Then watch a joke cross its line at dinner: the laugh that lands — and, half a breath later, the laugh that takes something from someone. The Chinese have a word for the same discipline in cooking, huohou (火候), the timing of fire: not how much heat, but heat meeting its moment. Skill, all of it, is the distance between those two sentences shrinking.
And the mark moves with you. Your right amount of sleep, honesty, effort, apology — no one else’s formula. Somewhere you are Shi, overshooting; somewhere else you are Shang, hanging back. The question was never what is the correct amount in general. It is which correction the person standing where you stand needs tonight.
Find one thing you do by borrowed rule — someone else’s salt, someone else’s schedule — and taste for your own. The pause just before too much: that is where thirty years live.
A Moment to Keep
“Just right” is the least photographable moment there is — the pinch in mid-air, the flame turned down one breath early, the sentence stopped while it was still funny. It cannot be repeated, only kept: named, marked, carried like the exact weight of a spice you once held in your hand. From a moment, into something that keeps it — that is what we make at Story & Hour.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does zhongyong (中庸), the doctrine of the mean, actually mean? Zhong (中) means hitting the center without deviation — the oracle-bone character shows a banner struck through its middle, a mark to be hit, not a midpoint to be averaged. Yong (庸) means constant use and practice: holding that accuracy daily. Cheng Yi’s classic definition: 不偏之谓中，不易之谓庸 — “not deviating is zhong; not changing is yong.” It is precision sustained, not compromise.
Is the doctrine of the mean about compromise and being mediocre? No — the opposite. Confucius condemned the xiangyuan (乡愿), the “village worthy” who agrees with everyone, as “a thief of virtue” (德之贼也), and the Zhongyong defines true strength as 和而不流，中立而不倚 — harmonizing without drifting, standing at the center without leaning, even under an entire state’s praise or blame. Splitting every difference is the counterfeit the text warns against.
What does 过犹不及 (guo you bu ji) mean? “Going too far is as bad as falling short.” From Analects 11.16: asked which student is better — Shi, who overshoots, or Shang, who falls short — Confucius answers that overshooting is the same as missing: both arrows miss the target, on opposite sides. The same book shows him giving opposite answers to the same question (Analects 11.22), pushing the hesitant student forward and holding the over-bold one back — teaching to the mark, not to a rule.
How does the doctrine of the mean compare with Aristotle’s golden mean? They converge independently, within about a century and with no contact between the traditions: both define virtue as a mean between excess and deficiency (Nicomachean Ethics, Book II), both insist the mean is “relative to us” rather than an arithmetic average, both ground virtue in repeated practice (Aristotle’s hexis), and both call it nearly impossible — Aristotle’s “to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time… is not easy” matches Confucius’s “blades can be walked, the mean cannot be done.”
What is shizhong (时中), the “timely mean”? The Zhongyong’s term for a center that moves: the right amount depends on the moment and the person, so the mean must be re-found with each shot rather than stored as a rule — the way a master cook re-times the fire for every batch of ingredients, every evening.
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