Pulling up seedlings to help them grow (yamiao zhuzhang)
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 72). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Spread only
Date or witness: c.4th–3rd centuries BCE; Mencius 2A2
Region: China
Workbook date-sort bounds: 400 BCE to 201 BCE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
An impatient farmer physically stretches his seedlings to make them grow faster and kills them. The foolish-helper anecdote became a durable idiom.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
The seedling fable survives in the Mencius and later became an idiom.
What remains uncertain
Canonical preservation and education are demonstrated; independent adoption by ordinary people in the fourth–third centuries BCE is not.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria