Wen Hui

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Wen Hui

Traditional Chinese:

温恢

Simplified Chinese:

温恢

Transliterations

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Wen.

Wen Hui a minister of the Kingdom of Wei during the Three Kingdoms Period of China. Wen Hui was a reputed administrator of Wei. After many successful performances as a local official in the late Han Dynasty, Wen Hui returned to the capital and ended up becoming a prime minister of records. Cao Cao quickly took notice of Wen Hui's skill and promoted him to many other important positions in the future. One of such as protector of Yang.

[edit] Mentions in other works

Wen appears in the “Essentials of Nourishing Life” chapter of the Zhuangzi (circa 300 CE), a manual on Taoist philosophy. The chapter mentions how he was amazed at his kitchen attendant, Cook Ding’s, masterful ability to carve up a beef cow. As he carved, the cleaving of the knife and the tapping of the cook's feet created a rhythm similar to "Sanglin" dancing. Wen exlaimed, "It's so wonderful! How can one's skill reach this condition?" Cook Ding stopped and replied

"What I'm keen on is Dao, which exceeds the pursuit of skill. When I had just started to cut beef, what I saw was a whole ox, but three years later, I never saw an integral ox. Now I don't need to watch with my eyes any more, but merely feel and understand with my mind. At this moment my organs stop functioning, and only my mind is working. When I cut in the direction of the veins of the ox, I find no obstacles. That is why the knife edge still remains sharp although I've used this knife for nineteen years and cut thousands of oxen."

This story spawned a saying called "Cook Ding Cuts the Beef," which is a Taoist anecdote for cultivating the Tao by following the natural flow of things.^[1]