During the Warring States period, there was a thinker called Mo Zhai(墨翟) who proposed that human beings need to love and help each other. He felt that it was time to bring killing each other to an end. But there was also another thinker called Yang Zhu (杨朱) who claimed that everything one does should be for himself. One day a student of Mo Zhai called Qin Guli(禽滑厘)asked Yang Zhu, “If just pluck one of your fine hairs from your body and it would benefit everyone, would you be willing?” Yang answered, “There is no chance that a problem could be solved by one fine hair.” Qin continued,” What if it could then?” Yang still didn’t agree. Eventually a phrase was developed to when describe a stingy person ‘Yi Mao Bu Ba’ (一毛不拔) which literally means, “too stingy to pull out a hair”.
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