熟能生巧

Origin and story

Ouyang Xiu’s Guitian Lu (歸田錄), volume 1, tells of the archer Chen Yaozi, who is proud of his skill. An old oil seller watches him hit eight or nine shots out of ten but only nods slightly. When challenged, the seller explains that the achievement comes from a practiced hand, angering Chen.

To demonstrate, he places a coin over a gourd’s mouth and pours oil through its central hole without wetting the coin. He attributes this too to familiarity gained by doing the task. Chen laughs and lets him go. The later idiom neatly expresses the story’s lesson, although those exact four characters are not the oil seller’s recorded words. Skill grows through repeated, attentive practice.