Daniel Mroz

Zuò jǐng guān tiān 坐井觀天 is a chéngyǔ 成语, an idiomatic saying derived from a story in the Zhuāngzi, a collection of stories and anecdotes composed between 476 & 221 BCE. it presents funny and irreverent fables, allegories, and parables, which teasingly subvert any possibility of certain perception and judgement.

In one of these tales, a frog who lived in a dilapidated well celebrated his dominion over his tiny home, inviting a tortoise from the eastern ocean in for a visit. The sea tortoise was too large to fit itself into the well, and from outside told the frog about its own vasty ocean home, which was so hard for the little frog to imagine, that his mind scattered in all directions in astonishment, beside himself in his puniness (trans. Ziporyn, 2022: 140). The story of the frog in the well, the jǐndǐ zhī wā 井底之蛙, suggests that our perceptions are determined and limited by our environments.

The saying zuò jǐng guān tiān has been my guide in the writing of my forthcoming book, Resonant Space: Religion, Theatre, and the Chinese Martial Arts. Each chapter is conceived of as a different well, revealing a different patch of sky to the frog who sits below.

I shall share some of the excellent contradictions that I’ve encountered examining the religious elements of the Chinese martial arts, their use by Asian theatre artists of the late 20^th century, and in my own work as a theatre director and dance dramaturg.

Ziporyn, B. trans. (2020). Zhuangzi: The Complete Works. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett.