In a short piece by the Song writer Ouyang Xiu, the archer Chen Yaozi has no equal in his time and is proud of it. An old oil seller watches him hit eight or nine shots in ten and only nods slightly. “Do you know archery? Is my shooting not fine?” Chen asks. The old man answers: “Nothing special. Only a practiced hand.”
Chen is angry. The old man sets a gourd on the ground, covers its mouth with a coin and pours oil through the hole in the coin without wetting it. “I too have nothing special,” he says. “Only a practiced hand.” Chen laughs and sends him away.
The Oil Seller is in the Chinese textbook for the second half of seventh grade.